


The Thief and the Knight

by thesparklingone



Series: For Then, For Now, For Always: Estimeric Week 2020 [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Drama, Estimeric Week (Final Fantasy XIV), Estimeric Week 2020, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25900084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesparklingone/pseuds/thesparklingone
Summary: After some time, Estinien asks. “What is your name?”The man looks up from his plate, half a stuffed cabbage roll between his graceful fingers.“Aymeric,” he says. “Aymeric Greystone.”(Written for the Day 6 prompt: "AU.")
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood
Series: For Then, For Now, For Always: Estimeric Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872139
Comments: 63
Kudos: 93
Collections: Estimeric Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I asked myself, "What if Aymeric had gone to an orphanage instead of being adopted?" and this happened.

Sister Jeanne-Marie de Vauldrain is refilling the tea kettle for the third time when the back doorbell rings. Her eyes find the clock; it is well after midnight, but that is how this goes. The back doorbell only ever rings in the wee hours, and after over twenty years as the Head Prioress of the Blessed Halone Sacred Shield Orphanage, she knows exactly what to expect. She sets the kettle on the stovetop and lights the burner. By the time she returns, the water will be hot.

Her gait isn’t quite as crisp these days as it once was so, combined with her mild dawdling over the teapot, she isn’t surprised to find that Novice Maren, also on night duty, is already there, eyes wide, her young hand clutching the doorknob. The Head Prioress gives her acolyte a sharp nod.

Even after two-and-more decades, the sight still always sends a needle’s point of sorrow, anger, and resignation surging through the old Sister’s breast. Another abandoned newborn, doubtlessly cast off for the unforgivable Ishgardian crime of being born inconvenient. She lets the novice, at least a quarter-century her junior, do the young person’s work of bending to retrieve the bassinet. The babe therein is asleep, swaddled in blankets, a smear of birthing blood still matting a fine black curl to its forehead. Closing the door against the night, the two women return to the kitchen just as the kettle begins its whistle.

Sister Jeanne-Marie bids Novice Maren to fetch a cloth and pour some of the freshly boiled water into the basin, tempering it with the cool water of the tap until it is lukewarm and gentle. They both examine the orphanage’s newest resident, the Head Prioress’ experienced eye quickly deducing the broad strokes of the tale from the meager, yet telling, evidence before her.

“Some highborn’s unlucky bastard, no doubt,” she says.

“How do you know?” asks the novice.

“The blankets,” she replies. “Look at that linen. Probably worth a moon of your wages, the swaddle alone. Speaking of which.” The Sister folds back the cloth, revealing the tiny infant’s body. The remains of the cut umbilical cord still cling to the navel. “A boy,” she declares, and Novice Maren can’t prevent her blush.

“My girl, you had better get used to it,” the old nun clucks, though not without humor. “The diapers are endless and the children cannot bathe themselves unsupervised until they have seen at least eight summers, and even then you have to ensure they actually scrubbed. In our service to Blessed Halone, you will be seeing more genitals than an old tavern whore.”

Maren’s blush only deepens at the venerable Sister’s coarse words, but she dutifully frees the child from his little nest in order to properly clean him. He wakes as she does, and begins to cry. As Maren soothes the distressed little boy, the Head Prioress notices the scrap of a note tucked within the cloth. Unfolding it, she reads:

_His name is Aymeric._

Sister Jeanne-Marie flicks her eyes over to where Maren is gently wiping the last traces of afterbirth from the sobbing baby’s skin, cooing at him softly as she does so. “Well, Aymeric Greystone,” she says, “Welcome to the Brume.”

* * * * *

There is nothing Estinien loves more than the rooftops of Ishgard. Well, almost nothing, he thinks. He hasn’t yet had the chance to kill many proper dragons, only the young ones, those the ranking officers allow the inexperienced units to face. But that will change, he knows, for he is no longer a Temple Knight, but a Knight Dragoon, though the ink on his promotion is hardly dry, his Drachen mail still a mess of unforged mythril in the armorer’s foundry, Gae Bolg yet to be born for him from beneath the smithy’s hammer.

But they will be. Soon. That is all that matters.

For now he contents himself with the secrets he has learned of the famed dragoons’ jump. He has taken to it with an ease that has shocked his comrades and superiors, but not himself. Why would it? This was his purpose, his raison d’être, everything he had longed for and toiled toward for the last twelve years. Twelve years, too, had Ishgard been without an Azure Dragoon. He would also rectify that.

Skimming the desolate heights of the tiered city is training, then, even in his leisure. To leap from eave to gable is to build strength and skill, and moreover, it is freedom, the freedom of solitude. For up here there is never a soul save occasionally a fellow dragoon on patrol, stern and sinister, the long, black blades of their mail and lances gleaming wickedly alongside Ishgard’s stone and steel spires.

Until today.

Today there is a young elezen man, somehow, and he sits precariously along the rake of the roof, dangling his legs into thin air. He has no shoes, wearing what looks like nightclothes—an oversized shirt and breeches that leave his slender calves bare. He braces his palms on either side of him and scans the horizon. A stiff breeze stirs the loose black curls of his hair.

Estinien frowns. Civilians have no place here amongst the shingles and chimney caps. It may be summer, but the high mountain air still carries a chill, especially for one so underdressed, and, Fury’s eyeballs, how did he get up here, anyway? Annoyed, Estinien launches himself skyward, shooting across the distance, and lands with a soft thump, light on his feet.

“What are you doing up here?”

In response, a shrug, followed by a surprisingly rich voice. “Who’s asking?”

Estinien scowls at the tone. “Ser Estinien of the Knights Dragoon,” he says.

He thinks he hears something out of the man’s mouth like, “Sodding knights,” but it’s too low to be sure. His head is bowed forward, face obscured by a thick, uneven forelock. He bounces his thigh against the roof where he sits.

Estinien isn’t quite sure why, but he folds his legs to sit beside him.

“Do you need help getting down?”

The young man looks over at Estinien then, and the breath steals away from his throat.

He is _beautiful_. Achingly, almost sickeningly so. His black hair is thick and glossy, curling softly around high cheekbones to frame a face that could have been carved by a sculptor, oh Halone. Fox-like eyes are the color of the highest vault of the firmament, pale, piercing blue and angled up at the corners, framed in long, black lashes. Even his ears are perfect, neither arcing downward nor tilting up like Estinien’s own, but straight-lined along the top to their elegant points like some fey creature out of myth. A strong jawline, fine nose, and full lips sinfully curved finish the portrait, and a portrait it is indeed, for Estinien could not have imagined such a face to exist outside _artwork_.

As he watches Estinien watching him, one corner of those lush lips pulls upward in a smirk; he is well aware of the effect he has.

A pregnant pause, then a shake of the head. “Don’t think so,” he says. He looks away, toward a dormer in the gable maybe half a dozen yalms beyond them. “Once the lady of the house shoos her lord away, she’ll let me back in to get me things.”

Ah ha, so that’s the story then. Caught in a tryst with a married woman; fled out the window to keep the cuckolded husband none the wiser. Well, they _are_ sitting amongst the rooftops of the Pillars. Estinien thinks he can certainly understand why a person would want to bed this man, then nearly blushes in disgust at his own lecherous imaginings.

What’s less understandable is why the young man—certainly no older than his own four-and-twenty summers—would waste his time with a married woman. Surely there were plenty his own age, unattached, who’d wish to woo such a rare beauty?

As if divining the question, those exquisite lips curve fully into a devilish smile. “The rich ones pay well.”

Estinien narrows his eyes. He hadn’t prior noticed but now that he’s looking it’s unmistakable. Beneath that loose shirt are sharp, bony shoulders and those slender, naked calves are somewhat too slender. A Brume rat, then, making his way through the world as best he can. And with a face like that, who wouldn’t be tempted to make one’s living off it?

“Gonna arrest me for it, ser?” the Brume rat asks, lowering his voice to a dusky purr. Prostitution is, of course, illegal per the Holy See and a sin against Halone, not that half the duplicitous priests don’t avail themselves of the service regardless. Two-faced bastards.

“The Knights Dragoon don’t concern themselves with such things,” Estinien snaps.

There’s a scrape of wood against stone, a dull shriek of poorly-oiled metal and both men look toward the sound. The window in the dormer has been opened.

“Aymeric?” hisses a low woman’s voice. “Aymeric, my dear boy, he has departed. You may return anon.”

Whoever she is, Estinien doesn’t see her lean out to look around for her missing… companion. Beside him, the man—Aymeric—rises and begins to pick his way along the roofline to the window. Estinien wonders briefly how he does not flinch with his bare feet on the sharp edges of the slate shingles before realizing that this is likely not the first time he has been in this situation. It is likely not even close to the first. There’s a strange roiling in his gut at the understanding.

At the window, Aymeric throws him one last feline smile before climbing inside and shutting it behind him.

* * * * *

The encounter fades from Estinien’s mind. He has too much else to concern himself with—training, mostly, and patrols. With the acquisition at last of his mail and lance, he is nigh indistinguishable from any other dragoon and he revels in it, relishes the furtive glances he gets from the populace as he loiters on the finials above Foundation. The Knights Dragoon are the most elite of Ishgard’s defenders, yet they are also the most unnerving; the endless rumors of their merciless selection process and brutal training regimen have made the population wary of them. These taciturn, black-mailed dragonslayers could be, like priests, the shepherds of their flock, or merely wolves with eyes for other prey.

Estinien knows which one he is.

It is late autumn now and the days have grown short and brittle while the nights are long and cold. Ishgard is yet to receive her first proper snowfall of the season but the wintry scent in the air speaks of its impending arrival. Estinien is perched above the Crozier, the black visor of his helm drawn low as usual, half watching the sky for familiar, ominous winged shapes though he knows that Daniffen’s Collar renders the city all but impregnable. Still, by now it is habit. He has just spent three weeks in the Western Highlands with a company of Temple Knights, routing dragons and heretics alike along the border of Dravania. Ever is he on alert.

Below him, a flurry of activity as the citizens prepare for the coming storm. The shopping district is crowded, peasants and lords—or the servants of lords—alike stocking up on the things they will need to weather the next few days. The throng shifts and jostles, roiling within itself like water at the boil. From within this mass, suddenly, a glint of light on soot-black hair, and Estinien’s gaze sharpens to a lance point on its target. He cannot recall the man’s name but that face, oh that preternaturally alluring face, he could never forget it.

He is ambling through the crowd with his hands in his pockets, clad in a worn old coat that nonetheless, upon looking, seems much too finely-made to belong to such an urchin. Perhaps it has been purloined then, or perhaps—the thought slips into Estinien’s mind like a tine into flesh—perhaps his _clients_ pay in more than just coin.

Almost unconsciously, Estinien creeps along the rooftops to follow the young man’s procession down the street. The Brume rat angles and slides, avoiding the press of bodies with the deftness of one born and raised in crowded spaces, until, it seems, he fails to notice a well-dressed highborn lady who has stopped to haggle with a jeweler. He realizes just before it happens, and raises his hands in defense, but it is too late to prevent the collision. The commotion that follows is only to be expected, the noblewoman indignant that such a brat would dare to lay his hands on her, the young man appropriately groveling and scraping with apologies. _Beggin’ your pardon, my lady, ‘twas a terrible accident._ When he raises his head to look her in the eye, she stutters in her tirade, undoubtedly silenced by the unholy beauty before her.

She waves one heavily-jeweled hand dismissively. “’Tis of no matter. Begone, wastrel.”

Said wastrel dutifully slinks away, but Estinien catches the flash of something in his hand as he stuffs it back into his coat pocket.

Estinien can’t say what compels him to continue to follow the man, but he does, fascinated and transfixed, searching his memory for the name but coming up empty. No matter. Eventually the gamin turns down a long, deserted alleyway, slipping away amongst other Ishgardian refuse, and Estinien makes himself known.

He vaults down to ground level, the loud ring of his greaves against the cobblestones belying the lightness of his landing. His quarry turns, wary, and narrows his already-narrow eyes. In the alley’s dimness, their blue is so pale as to be nearly invisible.

Estinien crosses his arms. “Let’s see what you have in your pockets, there,” he says.

The man’s eyes stay narrowed, but his head tilts slightly to the side and his mouth turns thoughtfully down at the corners. Then, suddenly, he grins, wide and wicked.

“I thought the Knights Dragoon didn’t concern themselves with such things, Ser Estinien.”

Estinien is unbalanced by the comment. Did the man recognize him solely by his voice? It seems impossible. They have met only once, and briefly, moons ago. And yet. He had been called by name.

“They don’t,” he admits, at last. “But I’m curious.” He too narrows his eyes, knowing it won’t be visible beneath his helm. “Did you really pickpocket that old bat?”

The urchin’s smile widens; sharpens. “Aye,” he replies. He slips his hand into his coat pocket and produces what is clearly a noble’s wallet: it is fine tooled leather inlaid with silver, and by the way it sags in the man’s palm, it is heavy with coin.

“Should keep me out of their bedrooms for a while, ser,” he continues. “One crime to prevent another, and all that.”

Estinien’s teeth are suddenly, unexpectedly on edge.

“Be careful,” he finds himself saying, and one of the other man’s fine eyebrows lifts. “The Holy See is unkind to thieves.”

“Is it? I never would have guessed,” is the reply, silken-smooth and dripping with disdain. Estinien’s cheeks redden in embarrassment at his own stupidity. He hopes his helm obscures it.

He grunts and leaps skyward again, returning to the rooftops, wondering why his pulse is so hard in his throat.

* * * * *

Autumn becomes winter. High along Abalathia’s Spine, in Ishgard the season is a sharpened blade. Icicles hang from eaves like the points of lances. Wind slices down streets like broadswords.

Estinien cannot sleep. It is not an uncommon affliction among the knights, either Temple or Dragoon, but for him its curse is somewhat more acute. He dreams, regularly, of flames and smoke, of thatched roofs ablaze and the stench of an entire town’s worth of charred flesh. Once he does he is not capable of dozing again.

Instead, he roams the darkened city’s heights. Below him, at street level, are lonely lamps and lanterns, illuminating walkways for no one. The night is clear and bitter cold. Above him, a thick carpet of stars, the moon a waning crescent, its lesser red twin a ruddy smudge in the heavens. Occasionally he passes a window yellow with light; some fellow insomniac who nonetheless has the sense to remain indoors. But on nights like these Estinien has never been able to curb his restlessness.

He is in the Pillars, among the tallest spires in the city. He leaps between them, so easily, his skill has grown rapidly since summer and he can jump higher, farther than nearly all his dragoon peers. He will claim the allegiance of the Eye, he tells himself. If not this year, then the next. These midnight excursions, too, are training.

Something catches his eye on the roof below him, some strange, dark shape looming next to a bank of chimneys. Estinien’s heart pounds in his ears as for a moment, he wonders, could a dragon have breached the city’s defenses? He streaks down from the ridgeline, lance in his hands and brandished, ready to fight, ready to _kill_ —

Oh, _Halone_.

It is no dragon. It is him, that urchin, that beautiful Brume rat, barefoot again, in long, loose nightclothes that are beyond inadequate for the frigid temperatures. He is curled around the chimney’s flashing, doubtlessly trying to claim a scrap of heat from the smoke of the fireplace indoors, far below them. But the fire in the grate would have been banked bells ago, no longer burning.

Estinien may be no shepherd, not anymore, but he immediately drops to his knees and feels for a pulse. The man is nearly frozen, his pale skin blue-tinged in the moonlight, and for a moment Estinien fears it will fall to him to bring the loveliest corpse in Ishgard to the Foundation mortuary. Blessed Fury’s mercy, though, his heart still beats. It is faint, but it is there.

He fixes his lance into place on his back. Every soldier knows that hypothermia is, at least, a relatively kind way to die. You are cold, then drowsy, and then you go to sleep and you do not wake. This man is too far along that last road to risk rousing him, in fact, it might not even be possible. He needs to be indoors, _now_. Estinien scoops him into his arms—he is shockingly light—and makes for his barracks, his dragoon’s jump carrying them across the city in mere minutes. At the entry, Estinien curses, fumbling for the key stuffed into the seam of his mail. He needs his hands but he can’t well toss the man over his shoulder, the Drachen mail is forged with spikes along the back, not to discourage a dragon from biting but to at least cause damage in death, were the dragonslayer to go in such a manner. In any case it means that Estinien has to try and prop him up against his chest while he unlocks the door to his room. By the Fury, he can feel the chill of the man’s skin through his very armor.

Once inside Estinien moves with purpose. He deposits the man in his bed and builds up the fire, pulls extra blankets from the chest against the wall. It feels like wasting time but he also shucks his mail; he doesn’t want to accidentally stab him to death while trying to save his life, after all. Down to his woolen shirt and breeches, Estinien again lifts the young man and sets him in front of the fire in a pile of blankets. His first concern is the extremities, especially the toes. Rage shoots through him when he thinks that he’d been sent into the winter night like that by whoever it was that had begged him to their bed. To a highborn, covering the tracks of an indiscretion was more important than a man’s very _life_.

Estinien arranges his unconscious guest on his side so that his hands and feet reach toward the flames in the fireplace. Then he takes one foot and begins to rub it between his palms, the man’s skin so cold it nearly burns. At first glance, he doesn’t think he sees frostbite along his toes, and if he’s correct, it’s a small miracle. As expected for someone who has likely never had access to adequate footwear, the soles of his feet are calloused and chapped, dusted with soot from the rooftops. With the rag he uses to clean his armor, Estinien wipes them down. He then sets to work on his hands—the man’s fingers are long and slender, his nails ragged but surprisingly clean—but even as Estinien works, there doesn’t seem to be much change. He is still like ice.

Estinien hesitates. He could take him to the infirmary, but the reason he hasn’t is because he worries that the chirurgeons will deduce what the young man had been up to when he’d ended up stuck outdoors in the winter night, and if they do he’ll go straight to the Tribunal. On the other hand, if Estinien fails to revive him, _he’ll_ end up having to explain to the lord commander exactly how and why a dead body ended up in his room.

Estinien chews his lip.

Another thing that every soldier knows is that the best cure for hypothermia is skin-to-skin contact with someone else. In training they were warned that they should be prepared to climb nude into a bedroll with a fellow frostbitten knight if necessary, but in no way is Estinien going to go that far with this man. Shirtless, though, he decides he can do.

So, with a silent prayer to the Fury that this won’t turn out to be the stupidest thing he’s ever done, he strips off both their tops, leaving them in their trousers. The man is expectedly skinny, wiry as lowland prairie grass, with hollows between his ribs deep enough to make Estinien frown. He pulls back the covers on his bed and lays the young man in it, facing away, then steels himself and climbs in behind him.

Oh _gods_ every instinct tells him to shrink away, he is _frozen_ and touching him is like lying against a block of solid ice. Nonetheless, Estinien grits his teeth and piles the blankets around them, draping his arm across the man to pull him close, back to chest. They are about the same height and Estinien finds his nose pressed into the back of the urchin’s head, his glorious black hair softly curling against his face. His scent is sweet, fine milled soap and perfumed oil, which surprises Estinien until it occurs to him that whoever… hired… him probably made him bathe before taking him to bed.

Or maybe that was part of the… encounter.

The thought sends a wave of revulsion through the dragoon, enough to make him feel ill. Which is at least momentarily distracting from the discomfort of his _coldness_.

Agonizingly slowly, degree by wretched degree, Estinien feels himself begin to warm, and the other man along with him. He’s still shockingly cold, but he no longer feels like a chip off a glacier, and there’s a sudden shudder of his indrawn breath, a twitch in slumber of his legs and feet.

He will live, thank Halone. It is enough for Estinien to relax, and eventually find sleep himself.

* * * * *

Estinien awakes unusually warm and drowsily puzzles over why before he remembers. His eyes fly open and he finds himself staring into another pair, narrow and blue and lined with lashes black enough to make them seem also lined with kohl. He hasn’t planned for this moment, not one bit, and he is even more unprepared for when the other man smiles—it’s a smile to make the hair stand up on your neck—and presses his lips to Estinien’s.

In his panic, Estinien freezes, shocked into stillness as he tries to comprehend what is happening. Then he feels the man’s fingers ghosting along the plane of his stomach before they dip below his waistband, and _that’s_ enough to send Estinien rocketing out of bed, stumbling backward, nearly falling on his arse in his haste to get away.

_“What in the name of the Fury’s sodden cunt are you doing?”_

The man sits up in Estinien’s bed, blinking slowly, his black brows raised in clear surprise. He did not expect this reaction, and they stare at each other in strained silence for long minutes.

“I don’t even know your _name_ ,” Estinien finally says.

The man shrugs. “Not usually a problem.”

Estinien makes a disgusted noise and retrieves his shirt from the floor where he’d discarded it, pulling it over his head.

“I don’t want to fuck you,” he says.

“Then why am I here?”

Estinien snorts, but it’s a reasonable question. “I was out on patrol last night and found you half-frozen on a rooftop. I thought you might not want to die.”

The man does not reply. His perfect lips turn down into a small frown, scowling ever so slightly as he watches Estinien. It is difficult to discern what emotion the expression represents, but the dragoon doesn’t feel inclined to worry much about it.

“Are you hungry?” he asks. The man’s frown deepens, but he nods.

“Wait here, then,” Estinien tells him, shoving his feet into his boots. He makes for the dragoons’ canteen. It is past the normal time for breakfast, but dragoons are fickle creatures and the Holy See’s cooks have long adjusted to their nature. He loads two plates as high as he can with leftovers and takes a large glass bottle filled with water, then returns to his room.

The man has donned his shirt, thank Halone. Estinien sits cross-legged before the fireplace and sets their food down on the floor. He’s forgotten to bring silverware but he doesn’t care, and doubts it will be a problem for his guest, either. After a moment, the urchin slides out of bed and joins him. He eats slowly, deliberately, in a manner Estinien would not have expected for someone so clearly underfed. He had assumed the man would set to the food like a beast, but he is controlled and restrained in his mannerisms. Perhaps another thing demanded of him by his highborn masters.

After some time, Estinien asks. “What _is_ your name?”

The man looks up from his plate, half a stuffed cabbage roll between his graceful fingers.

“Aymeric,” he says. “Aymeric Greystone.”

Ah, a bastard then, and an unclaimed one, he’d wager. Estinien knew that sometimes lords acknowledged their illegitimate children and provided for them, occasionally even raised them in their households, but Aymeric clearly had not been or he wouldn’t need to pickpocket and prostitute his way through life.

“I remember _your_ name, Ser Estinien,” Aymeric says, and some sharp edge shines in the comment.

“Aye,” Estinien replies. He won’t rise to the bait. “I know.”

They finish in silence and Estinien goes to rummage through his dresser. Aymeric is reedy where Estinien is slender and muscular, but his things should fit well enough. He has linen underclothes and a woolen tunic and breeches, heavy wool socks and a scarf. He even has an extra cloak he can give the man, and a pair of old leather boots that are nonetheless still in good condition.

“Here,” he says, dumping it all on the floor by where Aymeric sits. “It will be big on you, but it should work.”

Aymeric eyes the bounty of clothing and reaches out to touch the sleeve of the shirt.

“You must be wealthy,” he murmurs, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, “to have so much.”

“I didn’t buy it,” he replies, snorting. “’Tis issued by the Temple Knights.”

“They _give_ it to you?” For the first time, Aymeric seems taken off guard. “For _nothing?_ ”

“For the price of dedicating our bodies and lives to the defense of Ishgard,” Estinien snaps. “I slay _dragons_. The least the Holy See can do is clothe me for it.”

Something dark and ferocious passes across Aymeric’s exquisite face but he says nothing, instead standing and beginning to disrobe. Estinien flushes red and quickly turns around to stare at the corner while the man changes, and as he does he’s certain he hears a low, derisive chuckle. He chooses to ignore it, wishing now to quickly put this episode to rest and get on with his day. He must needs clean and polish his armor and recommence the endless work of his training.

Clothed now in items that won’t kill him in their uselessness, Aymeric departs the dragoon barracks, quickly disappearing into the maze of backstreet passages in the eastern districts of Foundation. Estinien watches him as long as he can, and then sits at his window for a good long while afterward, frowning.

It takes him a bell to realize all the coins in his dresser are gone.

* * * * *

Winter deepens, intensifies, then relents. The direction of the wind changes, bringing with it the distinct redolence of approaching spring. The weather isn’t mild yet, but now when Estinien stands high atop the battlements on the Steps of Faith, he can see the streaks of pink and white along the mud of the Coerthan snowmelt as the wind-flowers begin to bloom.

His strength continues to grow. He is pushed to ever greater heights of skill and performance by a rivalry that has formed over the last few moons between him and one of his fellows: Ser Heustienne de Vimaroix. Like Estinien, Heustienne is an orphan. Like Estinien, Heustienne had been adopted by a retired Knight Dragoon. And like Estinien, Heustienne has made no secret of her aspiration to claim the Eye’s allegiance and become Ishgard’s next Azure Dragoon. But _unlike_ Estinien, Heustienne’s foster-father is not Ser Alberic Bale, the _previous_ Azure Dragoon, and Alberic has been training Estinien since he adopted him at age twelve. Estinien is confident he has the advantage.

Still, he takes nothing for granted. For one, he has learned the hard way that nothing _is_ granted, and for two, he wants, more than anything, to win.

Despite the all-consuming nature of his focus, he has not forgotten about the Brume rat, Aymeric Greystone. In fact, he’s not sure he could forget even if he wanted to, because he keeps seeing him around the city. Ducking along a corner in Saint Reinette’s Forum. Trawling the vendor stalls in the Crozier, doubtlessly relieving more lords of their coin. Once, he thinks he even catches a glimpse of him exiting Saint Reymanaud’s Cathedral after mass, though he suspects his eyes deceive him. It’s hard to believe anyone that hard on their luck would be devout, but maybe he believes the Fury will deliver him if he prays hard enough. Plenty of Ishgardians do.

Mercifully, Estinien hasn’t seen him on a rooftop since his ill-fated outing in the Pillars, and he hopes it stays that way.

One evening—about the time of year when both the primrose and ramson would be blooming in the Eastern Highlands—Estinien is at the Forgotten Knight tavern. It is an unusual outing for him, normally he disdains such crowded, noisy spaces. But he has had a long, exhausting few weeks of patrols in the Central Highlands, based out of Camp Dragonhead, and upon his return to the city he’d had a powerful craving for ale. It is also an evening midweek, which means the pub is less raucous than it would be otherwise. So he claims a table in the corner and a pint of whatever the special is, and sits to enjoy the comfort of the indoors and the lack of obligation for a few hours.

He has not been there long when a familiar, black-haired urchin slides into the seat beside him.

Estinien eyes Aymeric sidelong. “What are you doing here?”

“Drinking, same as you.”

Estinien supposes he can’t argue with that.

“Fine then,” he says, “but keep your hands out of my pockets. You already got your gil out of me.”

Aymeric fidgets in his seat and gives Estinien a small, lopsided smile. He looks almost chagrined. Almost.

“Er… aye. Didn’t get paid for me work, that night, you see.”

Estinien snorts into his ale.

“And you repaid my saving your life with thievery.”

At that, Aymeric does in fact look properly chagrined. “’Tis a point,” he says. “Let me buy you an ale.” At the look Estinien gives him he adds, “Think it a gift of House Dzemael.”

That makes Estinien laugh. He has no patience for the endless Ishgardian gossip, but no one living in the city can fail to figure out that House Dzemael is the most notorious of the four High Houses. If Aymeric has somehow managed to pilfer a bit of their obscene wealth for himself, well, whatever he took, they probably won’t even notice.

Estinien flags down the bartender and orders another drink, as does Aymeric, who pays just as he said he would. They clink their mugs together, and take hearty draughts.

“Don’t see you around here much, Ser Estinien,” Aymeric says and Estinien shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t much care for it, honestly,” he replies. “Too many people. Though I suppose that’s what makes it good for _you_.”

Aymeric grins wolfishly. “Sack-sopt knights don’t notice lost wages. Think they spent it on drink, they do.”

 _Or whores,_ Estinien adds, inwardly.

Outwardly, he cocks an eyebrow at Aymeric over his tankard. He’s glad he’s never been one for getting into his cups.

* * * * *

Weeks press on, and summer looms. The city’s spires gleam in the lengthening days, flowers spilling from window boxes, courtyards full of greenery. It is, despite its beauty, Estinien’s least favorite time of year. Late spring always reminds him of Ferndale, of the emerald roll of the Eastern Highlands and the ewes with their lambs at their sides. He would excise the memories from his mind if he could, but he cannot, so instead he stands above the outer walls of the Brume overlooking the great abyss beyond in a ferocious foul mood, arms crossed against his chest.

A yell and the sounds of a scuffle catch his attention and he turns, irrationally irritated at the disturbance. Below, two Temple Knights, a hyur and an elezen, have a man by the arms and are struggling to hold him, half dragging him down the dirty street. Their difficulty in doing so is a testament to their captive’s strength or desperation or both and when the man’s face comes fully into view it sends Estinien’s heart fully into his mouth.

It’s Aymeric.

Estinien knows, immediately, that his little urchin has grievously miscalculated, somehow. The elezen knight manages to get both his arms under Aymeric’s and hoists him up by his armpits, leaving his belly exposed to the vicious punch the hyur lands against it with a hard, gauntleted fist. Aymeric crumples to the ground like a discarded scrap of cloth. He is so winded he can’t even reach out to break his own fall and he topples face-first into the cobblestones.

“Bloody _thief!_ ” Estinien hears the knight who hit Aymeric suck back a snorting inhale and then he spits a huge glob of yellow phlegm onto the back of Aymeric’s head. It’s followed by a heartless shout of laughter that Estinien barely registers as white-hot fury explodes in his chest. The hyur knight is winding up a vicious kick at Aymeric’s side, one that will surely break ribs if it lands and Estinien isn’t thinking, he is acting as he shoots skyward, lance in hand, to fall like a stone dropped into a well, the rippled impact of his landing sending both knights stumbling backwards, arms thrown up to guard their faces.

Estinien straightens and stands over Aymeric like Halone Herself stands over the nave of the Vault.

“What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?” the hyur knight demands. He sounds brash, but Estinien can see the wariness in his posture; he is ill at ease before a Knight Dragoon and rightfully so. The knight points his finger at Aymeric, still lying motionless on the ground. “He’s a thief.”

“Guilty of stealing what?”

Both knights frown and shift on their feet.

“A chicken pie,” the hyur knight says at last.

“A chicken pie,” Estinien repeats. He lets the silence hang, tense and heavy. He thinks of all the dragons he has faced, all the wivres and drakes and syrictae he has killed, in the name of protecting this city. In the name of protecting _this_. “You would beat a man senseless over _a fucking pie_.”

The hyur knight explodes in rage.

“He’s a sodding, worthless Brume tramp!” His eyes bulge in their sockets. “Should be legal to kill him for _existing_.”

Estinien shoots out his arm to grab him by the collar of the shirt that protrudes above his armor. He is nearly a fulm shorter than the elezen dragoon and, despite his heavy mail, Estinien effortlessly hauls him up to the very tips of his toes and drags him in close until the cold black mythril of his helm’s visor is nigh pressed against the knight’s nose.

“But it’s not, is it,” he snarls. “As a Temple Knight you swore an oath to _protect_ this city, and that includes the Brume tramps. Know that though _you_ may not take your oaths seriously, _I_ very much _do,_ and ask yourselves if you wish to test your sorry blades against a dragoon’s lance.”

Both knights are motionless, and the hyur that Estinien has by the throat is wide-eyed and trembling.

“ _Run,_ ” Estinien says, shoving him away, and both of them do, stumbling over their own feet and knocking into each other in their haste to get away.

Estinien watches as they disappear, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, breathing raggedly through his nose. He wants, so badly, to pursue them. After Nidhogg and the dragons, there is nothing he hates more than knights who think their positions give them the right to bully and torment. Those knights see the excess and indifference of the nobility and think it a thing to aspire toward, not something to revile. Estinien would show them the error of their ways.

But his vengeance in this, like all his vengeance, will have to wait.

Aymeric groans softly at his feet.

Estinien kneels down next to him.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

“Aye,” comes the labored reply. “…I think.”

Estinien grasps his hand and pulls him to standing; he immediately sways and Estinien catches him around the waist for support. He is so Fury-blasted _thin_.

“Come with me,” he says, and Aymeric nods, mute. It’s not as if he can do much else.

* * * * *

At the dragoon barracks Estinien sits Aymeric down in the bathroom. He opens his field first aid kit and examines his face; it is cut and bruised where he fell against the pavement. His nose is bloody, but luckily not broken, and his lip is split and bleeding. By the swelling and the redness it is clear he will have a magnificent black eye by morning, as well. On his solar plexus there is already a huge, purpling bruise where the knight’s fist made contact, as well as bleeding cuts within it in the distinct pattern of knuckles. Estinien gently palpates the skin around the edges of the mark, trying to feel for internal damage. Aymeric winces, and Estinien frowns. He can dress wounds easily enough, but he fears that this time, Aymeric may need a proper chirurgeon.

“If I took you to the infirmary—”

“No.”

Estinien grimaces. He decides not to push it.

With a damp cloth he gently wipes the blood from Aymeric’s face, cleans the cut on his lip and around his nose. Vulgar strings of mucus web in Aymeric’s hair from where he was spat upon, and seeing them makes Estinien’s chest throb with anger, but he sets his teeth and doesn’t comment. Aymeric himself is strangely, unnaturally quiet through the whole process even though Estinien is certain he is in quite a bit of pain.

 _Perhaps he’s used to it,_ Estinien thinks grimly. Much like he’s used to being clawed by dragons, stabbed by heretics, worked physically to the bone by training. Eventually, you hardly notice it. But something is bothering him, something seems off. He’s seen Aymeric about his work and he’s very, very good at it.

“’Tis unlike you,” he says at last, “to fail your sleight of hand.”

Aymeric’s expression doesn’t change but his gaze lifts, flickers to Estinien’s face, just for a moment.

“I didn’t steal the pie,” he says. Estinien waits, and he continues. “’Twas a little girl, maybe twelve summers. I’ve seen her around. ‘Nother orphan, most like. Shopkeeper hailed the knights so I told her to say I took it and gave it to her.”

Estinien’s throat is closing, anger and horror crowding into a lump in it. Knights like the ones who beat Aymeric would beat a child just as readily, and both of them know it. 

“Couldn’t let that happen to her,” he finishes, looking away.

Estinien lifts the cloth to continue cleaning his wounds, but his hand is shaking and he has to stop, has to put it down again. Aymeric notices, watches him as, again, he clenches and unclenches his fists. Estinien almost wishes he had pursued those knights, wishes he had thrown them over the wall and into the seething abyss. Taking one, long, shaking breath, he exhales slowly and forces himself to let it go.

“I see,” he says.

When the wounds are dressed, Estinien retrieves a towel and some bathing implements and one of his clean shirts to replace Aymeric’s bloodied old one. He leaves Aymeric to wash then goes to fetch food for them from the canteen—it feels an old ritual, now, though it is only the second time he’s done it. When he returns Aymeric is bathed and dressed, looking tired and dazed and somehow still achingly lovely despite the discoloration and swelling on his face.

Sat down in Estinien’s room, with a plate on his lap, Aymeric speaks again.

“Why?”

His eyes are closed and his head is bowed, his beautiful, battered face twisted in anguish.

“Why do you help me?”

Estinien hesitates. He’s not sure he can adequately answer. He doesn’t think “because it’s the right thing to do” will go over well and, frankly, it wouldn’t be honest, either. But what would be? He searches within himself, fumbling around for something that will be truthful but not patronizing or cliché, and remembers Aymeric’s words from earlier.

“I couldn’t let that happen to you,” he says.

Aymeric makes some pained noise, it could be a laugh or a snort or a sob, or maybe it’s all three. Estinien isn’t good with comfort, doesn’t know how to say anything to make anyone feel better, so he holds his tongue. In the silence, Aymeric opens his eyes—well, the one that isn’t swollen shut—and looks at him a long moment.

“You’re a very strange knight,” he says.

Estinien swallows hard, understanding his meaning, and feeling somewhat sick for it. “I am not,” he replies. “There are many good knights in Ishgard.”

“You’re the only one I’ve met.”

* * * * *

Estinien’s twenty-fifth summer is a blur of deployment in Coerthas, of long marches in the hot sun and longer battles against hotter dragonfire. Seeming hordes of drakes, aevis, and archaeornae fall before his lance, as do two lesser dragons, a wyvern, and finally, truly, a proper _dragon_. When he leaps from the rocky outcrop in the Western Highlands to land, light as air, on the great beast’s back, even as it hurtles skyward on its wings, he feels nigh on invincible. And, as if the Fury Herself guides him with Her very hands, Gae Bolg’s wicked point finds the narrow seam between the scales on the monster’s back at the base of the neck, severing the spinal cord in one savage blow.

An enemy of Ishgard falls lifeless from the sky, its killer streaking down in triumph like a star cast out from the heavens.

Estinien’s return to Ishgard after that is nothing short of triumphant. The dragon he slew—Kieralwyth—was a notorious lieutenant of Nidhogg’s brood. His death is doubtless a great blow to the Dravanian Horde. For his feat, Estinien is celebrated by his peers, given a commendation by the lord commander, and his blood sings with the surety that _soon_ —soon the Eye of Nidhogg will stir, and make its choice, and it will choose him. _Wyrmblood,_ his fellows are beginning to call him, and the name sticks.

Heustienne, too, has a productive and bloody summer. At twenty-four she is a year Estinien’s junior but younger Azure Dragoons have been chosen in the past. Alberic himself, for one. Estinien is not complacent. He never will be. He fights and trains with the burning fury of the obsessed, and obsession is not an unfair way to describe his passion for this. It remains the only thing he truly desires in life, and if he sees any hesitation in his comrades’ expressions when he confesses these desires out loud, if he sees any concerned creasing of their brows, well, they cannot demand he stop or change. In the absence of an Azure Dragoon, the Knights Dragoon answer only to the lord commander, and he is getting on now in years, on the verge of retirement. The Holy See is beginning to speak of a search for his replacement. He concerns himself not with one young, suicidally ambitious dragonslayer.

At last, one afternoon, he returns to his barracks to find a letter waiting for him, addressed in handwriting he does not recognize. Estinien turns it over, sees the seal on the front in snow-white wax, and his heart begins to race. The note confirms what the seal had implied: he is summoned to the Holy Vault in one week’s time. The Eye has awoken.

* * * * *

Heustienne is also summoned. On the appointed day, they stand at the doors to the Vault, both decked in their Drachen mail. Heustienne’s is a striking bronzey-brown, unlike the standard black, and Estinien has heard the whispers, heavy with implication, that it’s the same as Haldrath’s was. He places no merit on such things. The Eye will choose one who is worthy of it, and Estinien is certainly worthy.

Ser Vellguine of the Heavens’ Ward and the lord commander are there to meet them, solemnly leading them inside and guiding them to the archbishop’s seat at the heart of the ancient building. The room is cold and austere, with tall, vaulted ceilings, a statue of the Blessed Fury high in an alcove at the back. Despite the height of the arches, Estinien feels the stone pressing all around him, heavy with the weight of history. Archbishop Thordan VII sits on his throne awaiting them, dressed head to toe in white and gold, a tall staff clutched in the claws of his fingers. He is sixty-seven years old, but he looks older, with a long white beard and deep bags below his piercing, pale blue eyes.

Estinien frowns.

He thinks, _I have seen those eyes before,_ but he cannot place where.

Ser Vellguine indicates that they should kneel, so they do, their mail ringing against the flagstones in the still, quiet air. From his perch, Thordan leans forward, signals with one hand, and two more of the Heavens’ Ward appear, carrying an ornate chest between them, deep, dark oak, covered in gold and iron. They come to a stop before the dais and lower the chest to the ground, and they do not even need to open it, Estinien—and Heustienne too, he is certain—knows exactly what is inside.

‘Tis the Eye of Nidhogg, Ishgard’s greatest prize, plucked from the very skull of the great wyrm himself by the city’s founders after seven days and nights of battle, one thousand years before. Estinien can _feel_ it, right through the heavy lid of the box they cage it in. It brims with aether, pulsating, laden with power enough to dull the senses. He’s nearly tipsy with it, just from mere proximity, and he’s glad he’s genuflecting, close to the floor, one hand braced lightly against the ground, because were he standing, he’s not sure he wouldn’t sway in place.

“Ser Heustienne de Vimaroix. Ser Estinien Wyrmblood.” Thordan’s voice echoes against the walls, amplified by stone. “The Knights Dragoon are the finest of all Ishgard’s knights, and you both are the finest of those. Thirteen years have we been without an Azure Dragoon. Thirteen years, and none since Ser Alberic have stirred the Eye. Yet this moon past, at last that has changed. To one of you it calls, that much is certain.” He fixes his penetrating gaze on each of them in turn. “Now we shall see which of you is to become our nation’s greatest champion.”

He nods his head at one of the Ward, who steps forward, brandishing a huge, ancient key. He inserts it into the ornate lock of the front of the chest, the click of the mechanism loud as a machinist’s gunshot. He lifts the lid, steps back, and Estinien sees it, sees it properly in the light, and he is transfixed.

Huge, blood-red, split with a black, vertical pupil, the Eye of Nidhogg _seethes_. It rages and roils, an ocean of aetheric power swirling within and around it, swelling to engulf them in its tide. Red tendrils seep out and reach for both dragoons, coiling around arms and ankles, engulfing sight and sound. The sheer power of it is annihilating, enough to drown in. This is the fire that lets them fight fire, the only force that can oppose Isghard’s mortal enemy: his own.

Estinien bows his head. It now will not be long. He feels that power reach out to him, caress him, tender and alluring as a fingertip trailed down his stomach and every bit as tempting. The aether swirls, pulses, gathers itself. His own eyes fall shut, all he sees is _the_ Eye, waiting, deciding.

The red tendrils dance in the beams of blue light shining through the stained crystal windows, then surge forward, judgment rendered.

The Eye chooses Heustienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This grabbed me by the throat and would not let go, so, away I went. I do hope you decide to come along for the ride.


	2. Chapter 2

Estinien spends the autumn in a daze. The mirror apple trees of the Central Highlands are red with fruit, yellow with dying leaves, and he notices it not. He trains, and he fights, he eats and he sleeps, he washes and dresses and cleans his teeth and dons his armor, and it is all done as if another’s hand guides him. It is rote, it is detached. He feels and experiences none of it. Weeks slide by that he can hardly remember, all running together into a discolored mess in his mind like artists’ inks pooling at the bottom of the palette.

Without his purpose, he is lost.

Heustienne is resplendent in her newly-acquired power. She is magnificent and disciplined, slipping into the role of commander as easily as a lance point slips into flesh. She knows each and every one of her soldiers, their weaknesses, their strengths, and she speaks plainly, steadfastly with the lord commander on how best to employ them. Together, they adeptly direct the fierce and formidable Ishgardian military machine. Estinien cannot prevent the stab of ferocious envy that pierces his breast every time he sees her. Self-pity, however, is a repulsive impulse and he refuses to indulge it, if only out of equally repulsive self-disgust that he feels it at all.

He can still kill dragons, at least. He hunts them as steadily and unflinchingly as he ever did, but the zeal has been bled from him, he knows. There is no longer the sweet song of death in his veins, no longer the adrenaline rush of battle. There is no longer an aspiration to chase, for none can face Nidhogg but the Azure Dragoon, and Azure Dragoon, he is not. Without the power of the Eye, he cannot achieve his deepest, dearest desire. He cannot avenge his family.

Alberic knows this, and frets over him. He had waited for him outside the Vault during the passage of the Eye’s judgment, along with Heustienne’s adoptive parents—old comrades, they. And when the two dragoons had emerged—Heustienne vibrant in triumph, Estinien stunned in loss—Alberic had put his arm around Estinien’s waist and silently guided him back to the dragoon’s barracks. Estinien had barely registered the touch. If he had, he wouldn’t have let him. But he’d been too bewildered to consider his pride, because for all he’d told himself that winning was no guaranteed thing, he had believed, to his marrow, that he would. That he and no other was destined to be the next Azure Dragoon of Ishgard, and not only that, but that it was by his hand that Nidhogg would finally fall. To his mind, it had been fate, all but decided. He had dreamed it so many times he had forgotten that his dreams always ended in screaming, like his childhood ended in flames.

Now, moons later, he curses himself for a fool, whenever the flickers of lucidity manage to pierce the haze of despondency he cannot shake. A thousand years has Ishgard battled Nidhogg and his Dravanian Horde. A thousand years and none have bested him, a thousand years and how many villages have burned, how many families have perished, how many orphans have trailed in the wake of smoke and ash? He is but one of countless, untold others; nameless, faceless. Who is Estinien to have believed he among them special? He is nothing and no one, an Eastern Coerthan peasant boy, born into poverty, broken by tragedy, like so many others that had come before, and so many more that would come after. As a dragoon he had perhaps attained some level of merit by the accounting of his homeland, but, now severed from the thread of hope he’d yet held, he has no choice but to face the bitter truth: nearly all dragoons were orphans, because to battle dragons was to stand first among the condemned. ‘Tis far easier for the Holy See to consign to such a fate those who have no families left to mourn them.

So Estinien figures that if he lives to see his thirtieth summer it will be a surprise of some gravity. It is resignation and it is surrender, but it allows him to get up and return to his work with some shadow of the purpose he has lost. He will kill dragons until they kill him, and then he will join his loved ones.

Late in the season—as the first fingers of frost are starting to feather across the window panes of Foundation—from atop the tall battlements of the Stone Vigil, he leaps high into the air, lance readied against an oncoming wyvern, and he does not see the second one, shooting in from the flank.

  
* * * * *

  
He should have died.

He should have died, and gone to his mother, his father, his brother.

He should have died, last stubborn weed of Ferndale finally succumbing to freezing winter, and let the ghosts of his village rest, all accounted for.

_He should have died—_

But he lives.

  
* * * * *

  
He awakes in the infirmary in Ishgard. Consciousness seeps into him slowly, like water seeps through cracks in stone. He feels liquid, listless, as if he drifts at the bottom of a great and crushing sea. His addled mind struggles to process whatever it is his senses are trying to tell him and it’s all fragments, all meaningless shards of bewildering impression. Eventually, pieces start to fall into place. He is warm, and a soft weight presses around him—blankets; he is in bed. His eyes are closed but he can discern light filtering through them—the sun, perhaps, is it daytime? His limbs are leaden and his body is stiff and—by the _Fury_ —as soon as he perceives his body he also, immediately, perceives _pain_. Pain, white-hot and overwhelming, shooting through his hips, his leg, his abdomen, back, shoulder, arms… it is enough to nearly send him plummeting back into senselessness, but before he again blacks out, his lips part and a rough groan escapes his parched and aching throat.

“Estinien? Estinien!” The voice, it is so familiar, he fumbles around in his own mind to put the name to it. “Captain Abel! Captain Abel, he stirs!”

 _Alberic_.

‘Tis Alberic who had called his name, Alberic who is calling now. Estinien forces himself to turn his head toward the sound—gods, it hurts to move, hurts like nothing else he has experienced—and manages to slit his eyes open. His eyelids feel crusty, dried and hardened, and the light is utterly blinding, he can see nothing for so long he wonders if his sight is well and truly gone.

Finally, he is able to make out the silhouette of a head, then the shapes of a familiar face, and aye, it is indeed Alberic who sits at his bedside, intently watching. He looks haggard and tired, there are dark circles beneath his eyes, giving the long scar across his right brow an even more sinister cast. His hair is messy and uncombed, his beard untrimmed and patchy. The thought occurs to Estinien, _How long has he been sitting there?_ followed immediately by its twin, _How long have I been unconscious?_ He is not sure he wants to know.

Despite the worn lines of exhaustion that crease Alberic’s face, the relief, the quiet joy, is clearly legible upon it. Even disoriented as he is, Estinien can see the tears that well at the corners of his foster-father’s eyes and spill down his cheeks, leaving dark lines on his skin. He reaches to take Estinien’s hand as rapid footsteps beat a path across the wooden floor, and Estinien tries to move to see who it is, but the pain of it, again, explodes behind his eyes, the press of Alberic’s fingertips suddenly shooting up his arm like fire, and, tenuous as his hold on consciousness is, it slips. He sinks back into darkness, and sleeps again.

  
* * * * *

  
The next time he wakes, it is less of a struggle to do so. His eyes open more readily, his awareness returns more steadily. It is not like picking through a wreckage, with shattered pieces of his perception strewn throughout his mind. It does, however, still feel like rising from a great depth, floating upwards through syrupy oblivion into dazzling light.

By the slant of the wan sunbeams in the window, it is late afternoon. He is in a small infirmary room of the Congregation, one of those reserved for the truly badly wounded—those the chirurgeons fear may not recover. It gives him an inkling of just how serious his condition is, and he makes the choice to let his mind slide beyond that thought without dwelling. He is certain that the hospitaliers will tell him everything he needs to know, will tut and cluck like a pack of old nuns, shaking their heads and soberly saying how lucky he is to be alive.

Estinien closes his eyes again. _Lucky_. Has he ever been, in all his wretched life?

He hears Alberic softly call his name, and slowly he manages to turn his head toward the sound. The pain remains, but it’s less obliterating than before, and he can breathe through it—dragoons are no strangers to it, after all. Alberic looks pinched and drawn and still exhausted, but mayhap not quite as starkly now. Estinien blinks up at him and Alberic reaches out a hand to rest on his forehead, softly brushing the white fringe of his hair away from his eyes.

“Welcome back,” he says, his voice tremulous and soft.

Estinien tries to speak; it takes much more effort than it should and the expansion of his chest hurts _very_ much indeed. He swallows, which also takes more effort than it should, and finally manages to croak, “How long…?” He means to ask, “How long have I been here?” but the first two words are all he can manage.

“Almost two weeks,” Alberic replies softly, divining his intent. “Gods, I feared you would never wake.” He looks down at Estinien and such emotion plays in his eyes that Estinien has to close his own; he cannot bear to see it. “Let me fetch the chirurgeons.”

He does, and as expected they fuss, murmuring words like _fortunate_ and _miraculous_ and _Halone’s will_ , and it does nothing but fill Estinien’s aching chest with anger. Had he the strength, he would snap that Halone could have seen fit to spare him injury at all, had She felt so inclined. But he has not the strength, and so he is silent as the chirurgeons gently but firmly sit him up against the pillows—it hurts more than he would ever dare admit—and give him water to drink and food to eat and tell him the story of how he came to be in this state in the first place.

The second wyvern, the one he did not see, hit him full speed midair and nearly bit him in twain; he lives thanks to the quick reaction of one of his comrades, Ser Ignasse, who leaped onto the back of the beast and killed it before its jaws could close. As is, Estinien has suffered multiple broken ribs, a broken collar bone, a fractured arm and wrist, torn muscles in his back, his thighs, his calf and shoulder, not to mention all the blood loss. His recovery will be long and arduous. Still, they do believe he will recover. There had been skilled conjurers at hand in the Stone Vigil, and they had done much to mitigate the worst of the damage before he could be transported to Ishgard for full treatment. Despite himself, Estinien feels a measure of relief at the healers’ reassurances. Ishgardian medics are not wont to overstate or mislead; a people so accustomed to war and tragedy has no use for false hope. For now, Estinien can do naught but rest and wait, so he resigns himself to it as best he can.

  
* * * * *

  
Mostly, he sleeps. The chirurgeons give him tea laced with poppy extract to make it deep and dreamless. When he does not, he has steeped willow bark to take the edge off enough to let him sit up and watch the fat flutters of snowfall through the window as Alberic talks. He thinks of it as being talked _at_ , rather than talked _with_ , both because he’s never been particularly talkative himself, and because he lacks the energy to hold much conversation right now, anyway. Still, Alberic’s presence is comforting and familiar. In the evenings, when he retires to where he’s staying in the city, Estinien finds himself full of melancholy loneliness, not that he would ever confess to such a thing.

‘Tis a cold, clear eve one night naught but three weeks before Starlight when there comes a _ping_ against the window pane. They both turn to look—Estinien still with a fair bit of difficulty—but the sun is below the horizon, last bruised bits of its light fading into dark, and all they can see in the glass is the room’s reflection. Then it is there again, a sharp tap as a tiny stone bounces off the frame.

Alberic frowns and moves to the window. A third pebble ricochets off it as he does and he sighs, undoes the latch, and opens the casement. Frigid air floods the room as he leans over the sill to look toward the dimly-lit street below.

“There’s someone down there,” he says. “’Tis difficult to make them out, but… it seems to be a young man? Black hair?”

Estinien blinks in surprise. Could it be…?

He hears the person outside call out, and he cannot discern the words but, the _sound_ , oh yes, he well knows that startlingly deep timbre, even though he hasn’t heard it in moons now, and the fact that he does is something else he allows his mind to slide by without lingering overly long. Or at all.

“He says his name is—”

“—Aymeric,” Estinien interrupts, and Alberic looks over sharply.

“Aye,” he says. “You know him?”

Estinien nods. “Aye. He’s…” he pauses. What is Aymeric to him? “…A friend,” he decides.

Alberic’s eyebrows lift up his forehead. “A friend? Well. He wants to come up. Shall I let him?”

“Aye,” Estinien says before he even realizes his mouth is forming the word. Alberic tilts his head to one side and he remains noticeably surprised. Before Estinien can muster the energy to comment on it, however, Alberic is leaning back out again, calling down.

“Come around the front then, Aymeric!”

He shuts the window and latches it, then adds another log to the fire before he heads downstairs. Woodsmoke curls up the chimney, its wafting warmth and scent gently softening the chill the winter air left behind. Estinien watches the golden flames dance and crackle as he waits, wondering what madness it is that has possessed him to agree to a visitor other than his foster-father while he’s in this state. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, though, for in a few short minutes Alberic is returning, a familiar urchin in tow.

Enough time has passed since Estinien last saw Aymeric that he is again taken aback, momentarily rendered awestruck, by the singular loveliness of his face—long since healed, and well, from the injuries he sustained at the hands of the knights the previous spring. His dark hair curls softly around pale cheeks rosy from the cold, and his blue eyes are bright and shining. Something about those eyes sparks some remembrance, a thought he had once that slips through the hold of his recollection like sunlight below the horizon. No matter; now is not the time to wonder on it.

“Hullo,” Aymeric says, and for the first time he seems bashful, unsure. Those brilliant eyes dart around the room before settling on Estinien, sat up in bed, and then only long enough to register before they flick away again.

“Hello,” Estinien replies. He too is unsure. He expected no guests. He has never really cultivated friends, regardless of how he described Aymeric to Alberic.

The pause that follows is distinctly awkward.

“Well,” Alberic says, clapping his hands lightly together. “I was just on my way out, so I shall leave you two to your own devices.” He steps over to the bed, and to Estinien’s horror, leans down to kiss his son on the crown of his head. “Good night, my boy, I shall see you on the morrow.”

If looks could kill, Alberic would drop dead right there in Estinien’s infirmary room, the way the dragoon glares daggers into his back as he departs. Aymeric watches him go, then turns to Estinien once the door is closed.

“Who is…?” he begins.

“Adoptive father,” Estinien hastily supplies.

“Oh,” Aymeric says. Gingerly, he sits in the chair by the bedside table. “Are you an orphan then, too?”

Estinien leans back against his pillows and stares at the ceiling. “Aye,” he answers, after a moment.

“I see.”

“Most dragoons are,” Estinien says, looking back over. He’s not entirely certain why he feels compelled to clarify the fact. Aymeric frowns a little, the corners of his perfect lips turning ever so slightly downward. The tiny pout well suits him, and Estinien finds the corners of his own, less perfect, lips twitching, just a tad, a strange urge to smile tugging at him. That alone is startling; he cannot really recall the last time he felt at all like smiling. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

Aymeric studies his hands where they are folded in his lap. “They say you were wounded fighting dragons,” he answers.

Estinien huffs, then winces as a sharp pain slices through his ribs. “Aye. ‘Tis no new thing to me.” He pauses. He is not being entirely truthful, really. His skin is carved with scars and he has had his fair share of close calls and near misses, but being this seriously injured is, in fact, a new thing to him. He has never before stood on death’s very threshold, and he has never before faced so long and so difficult a recuperation.

“Well,” he adds. He too looks down at his hands, the left still splinted the whole way to his elbow from the fracture. “’Tis uncommonly bad this time.”

“Will you recover?”

“So I’m told.”

Aymeric exhales softly, and Estinien realizes to his surprise that the man was holding his breath. “Good,” Aymeric says. “That’s good.”

“…Aye,” Estinien replies, mostly for want of anything better to say. They sit together in silence, Estinien staring unseeing off into the corner of the room. Outside, a gust of wind whistles through the eaves, winter’s mournful chorus sounding against the warm ring of the six o’clock bell. The fire pops and cracks in the grate. He is so tired, and it seems unfair, that sitting in bed and healing should be so exhausting when naught but a few weeks before he had been sailing through the very heavens on the power of his own skill and aether instead.

“Is it true you were nearly Azure Dragoon?” Aymeric asks, quietly.

Estinien closes his eyes. Behind them he sees another Eye, violent crimson, its miasma of power reaching, close, close, so very close… and gone. He doesn’t have the energy for this, oh Fury. “You are either Azure Dragoon or you are not,” he replies. “I am not.”

“The nuns at Sacred Shield used to tell us the stories of Saint Valeroyant and Saint Reinette,” Aymeric continues, as if he hasn’t heard what Estinien just said. “I always wondered what it would be like to know a hero like them.”

“Keep wondering,” he snaps, more harshly than he means to. “Heustienne de Vimaroix is Azure Dragoon of Ishgard. Talk to her if you want a hero.”

Aymeric looks away, and the red flush on his cheeks cannot possibly, by now, still be from the chill outside.

“’Twas not she who saved my life,” he says.

  
* * * * *

  
By Starlight, Aymeric’s is a familiar face at the Temple Knights infirmary. He usually comes in the evening, just as Alberic is heading out, and Estinien can tell that his foster-father has begun to watch for the arrival of his urchin friend, his eyes often glancing toward the clock as the sunlight begins to fade. If Aymeric is late he will usually wait ten or so minutes, as if it gives him relief to know his son will not be alone when he goes. He has yet to truly inquire about the handsome yet obviously impoverished young man but Estinien figures it’s only a matter of time, and wonders what he should say when Alberic inevitably asks him how they met. But the two interact little, and the question is never raised.

Estinien doesn’t really understand why Aymeric chooses to spend so much time with him. Cynically, he wonders if it’s simply to be out of the cold, but that thought strikes him as unnecessarily unkind, even for him. Regardless, he cannot deny that he is grateful for the company. Aymeric doesn’t worry over him like Alberic does, and it allows him to let the reality of his recovery fade to the back of his mind for a while. When he’s there, they busy themselves with simple, time honored diversions: cards, dice, board games. Estinien makes the mistake of challenging Aymeric to poker—scrounged bits of wood chips and buttons serve for tokens—and loses decisively, to his surprise. Intending revenge, the next day he insists upon a chess match, half-expecting Aymeric to never have learned to play, but he is wrong in this, and again, his urchin proves an adept gamesman and defeats him, though not as terribly as he did at cards.

Estinien can only shake his head. “Well, ‘tis clear I underestimated you.”

Aymeric grins like an imp. “Not a lot to do at an orphanage after your chores but play cards and old board games.”

Estinien represses the urge to snort, the better to spare his still-sore ribs. “Same as I now. Well, I shall have to practice until I can best you.”

“And I’ll have to continue to make sure you can’t,” is the reply. Aymeric’s eyes twinkle, their devilish shine for once free of the bitterness Estinien assumes was acquired in the hard lessons of poverty. His confident cheek again pulls at the edges of Estinien’s mouth, threatens to break the line of his signature scowl. Instead, the dragoon raises his eyebrows and huffs gently. He has never been one to back down from a challenge, no matter how trivial. A mixed blessing to be sure, but in this moment it feels oddly motivating.

“We shall see about that, my friend.”

  
* * * * *

  
On the eve of the holiday Alberic arrives bearing garlands of evergreen boughs and a small pile of tapers. Estinien rolls his eyes at the display. Starlight isn’t his favorite—well, nothing is, really—and spending it injured and still nearly entirely bedridden further diminishes its appeal. For the sake of his foster-father he tries not to be too curmudgeonly, and, he does have to admit, the effect once the decorations are up is rather nice. The branches bring welcome color to the dreary tones of winter and the candles’ golden light softens the hard lines of the otherwise bland and austere hospital room. Gentle scents of beeswax and evergreen pull at the loose edges of his memory, threatening to hearken him back to a time he dares not recall.

There is a knock at the door and one of the hospitaliers on duty pokes her head in.

“Ser Estinien, your friend is here,” she says. Behind her, in the hallway, waits Aymeric, wearing his worn old coat and the boots Estinien gave him last winter. Snowflakes cling in his tousled hair while a sheepish smile clings to his lovely face. In his hands he holds a paperboard box tied up with twine.

“Oh.” Estinien is genuinely surprised to see him, and wonders, briefly, what in the world he’s doing here on Starlight Eve when he remembers that, unlike him, Aymeric was never adopted. He likely has nowhere else to be other than wherever it is he lives in the Brume, and the thought of what that may very well look like is enough to put a lump in Estinien’s throat. He swallows against it and nods. “Hello, Aymeric.”

“Happy Starlight!” the hospitalier says cheerfully, shooing Aymeric inside before heading back to her post.

“Happy Starlight,” Alberic replies, then smiles at the newcomer. “Welcome, Aymeric.”

“Happy Starlight,” he says. “I, um.” He looks toward Estinien. “I brought you something.”

Estinien blinks in surprise as Aymeric hands him the box. It’s warm on the bottom, and smells enticingly of buttery pastry and gravy. Some kind of baked good, he guesses. “Er, I’m afraid I have nothing for you…”

Aymeric shakes his head. “You’ve been in bed for weeks, aye? Besides, I owe you.”

Alberic laughs softly. “’Tis a kind gesture, Aymeric. Why don’t you go on and see what it is, then, Estinien?”

The dragoon wonders what he could possibly be owed, but does as Alberic suggests, undoing the knot in the twine, lifting the lid of the box, and—

Oh, _Halone_.

It’s a chicken pie.

Estinien has no idea what to say. He glances toward Aymeric, who’s wearing a cheeky little grin, clearly he thinks it’s _funny_. But Estinien cannot see the humor in it. All he can see is the bloody nose, the black eye, the split lip, and though no evidence of the beating remains on any of Aymeric’s features, in his mind’s eye they are all still clear as day.

Alberic leans over and inhales deeply.

“Goodness, that smells wonderful! Faillard Bakery, if I’m not mistaken?”

Aymeric nods, smile widening. “Aye. Best pies in the city.”

“Then we’re in for a treat. A fine gift indeed!” Alberic says, and throws Estinien a look.

“A-aye,” he manages. There’s another lump in his throat but he’s able to keep it out of his voice as he looks to his friend. “Thank you, Aymeric.”

“Of course.” Something strange flits across Aymeric’s face, something fond and soft, and gods, Estinien hadn’t thought it possible, but for a moment, in all the glow of the candles, he is even more lovely. It sends a spike straight through Estinien’s ribs, an emotion he cannot name and is not sure he’d want to, if he could.

“Well, let’s get this sliced up.” Alberic whisks the pie from Estinien’s hands and goes to rummage in a cabinet across the room for plates and cutlery. His back turned, Estinien reaches to snag Aymeric’s wrist, pulling him close to his side.

“Tell me you didn’t steal it,” he hisses.

Aymeric blinks, surprised, and—it startles Estinien to notice—clearly hurt.

“I had to reserve it a fortnight ago,” he replies, voice equally low. “Bought and paid for.”

Estinien feels his body sag in quiet relief. He closes his eyes, the image of Aymeric’s battered visage once again painted behind them, sickening and somehow yet beautiful. “Good,” he says. His fingers loosen and he releases the other man. “Don’t—” His voice hitches. “Don’t risk yourself for me.”

He opens his eyes again to catch Aymeric’s just as they widen, their brilliant blue reflecting all the candles’ points of golden flame. The urchin runs his tongue over his lips, looks as if he’s about to speak, but Alberic interrupts.

“Here we are, then!” he calls. “I daresay this shall be a sight better than hospital food, Estinien.”

They look up. Alberic is smiling, a plate in each hand, offering them both a slice. “Aye, Alberic,” Estinien mutters, taking his. “Thank you.”

Aymeric pauses with his hand halfway outstretched, staring. “Alberic?” he asks. “Ser Alberic Bale, the previous Azure Dragoon?”

Alberic shakes his head, pushes the plate into Aymeric’s hands. “Aye, that would be me,” he answers. “Naught but a retired old man now, though.” Which is halfway funny, Estinien thinks, because Alberic has barely seen thirty-seven summers.

Those blue eyes swivel back to Estinien’s, and once again something flickers through the dragoon’s memory, there and gone. “You never mentioned that…” Aymeric trails off and Estinien watches as the realization dawns.

“’Tis you,” he says quietly. “The orphan of Ferndale.”

Estinien stabs his fork at the slice of pie before he nods, slowly. _‘Twas only a matter of time_ , he reminds himself. The story is widely known in Ishgard, and why would it not be so? It has all the makings of a great and memorable tale: the bucolic peasants’ village trapped in the path of brutal Nidhogg’s fiery rampage; the gallant hero who tried valiantly and in vain to save its people, only able to meet the great wyrm in battle after the beast had rained destruction down upon the innocents who’d called it home; the victory that had come at the cost of the hero’s power, the Eye abandoning him after he’d ensured Nidhogg’s retreat. And, in the aftermath of the battle, the single, tragic survivor: a soot-stained shepherd boy, shivering alone in the square.

Barely twelve summers at the time, Estinien hadn’t realized how infamous he was until years later, when he’d joined the Temple Knights and heard the rumors fly among the regiments, caught the whispered scraps of his comrades’ knowing voices whenever he’d passed by.

 _‘Tis the orphan of Ferndale_ , they’d said. _The boy for whom Ser Alberic laid down his lance_.

Involuntarily, his lip curls.

“Aye,” he replies at last, not raising his gaze. “’Tis me.”

Alberic clears his throat. “Aymeric.” His voice is soft. “’Tis a difficult topic. I’m sure you understand.”

Estinien, still staring at his plate, does not see how his urchin friend reacts to the gentle admonishment. Instead, he feels the delicate touch of deft fingers at his shoulder and the odd warmth the contact sends pouring through the linen of shirt, raising gooseflesh on his skin, enough to make him shiver with it. He lifts his head to meet the pale blue eyes that seek his own, heart strangely fast in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Aymeric says.

Estinien shakes his head. “’Tis nothing,” he replies. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the wry look on Alberic’s face and knows his foster-father sees through the deflection. He also knows the older man won’t push it, not now.

“This is delicious, Aymeric,” Alberic says, drawing attention away from the uncomfortable moment. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”

“You’re welcome,” Aymeric replies. His hand falls from Estinien’s shoulder and the dragoon pulses suddenly, ferociously, with longing. The feeling is almost frightening, and certainly bewildering, in its intensity. “Ser Estinien has…” Aymeric pauses, hesitates a moment, and when he continues there’s a timid, small note to it that is quite unlike the normally impudent Brume rat. “He’s been a good friend to me, this past year.”

Estinien’s face floods with heat.

“Has he, now?” Alberic says, again raising his eyebrows. He smiles. “Well, full glad am I to hear it.” 

  
* * * * *

  
Heavensturn, like Starlight, passes with little fanfare in the infirmary, though outside his bedroom window Estinien can see the flash and hear the burst of firecrackers as those who aren’t bedridden celebrate the start of the new year. Once again Alberic and Aymeric keep him quiet company for the holiday, though this time Aymeric brings little jam-filled biscuits and cardamom rolls instead of a chicken pie, praise the Fury. Estinien apprehensively wonders to himself if he does indeed face new beginnings, for he knows that ‘tis only a few days into the First Astral Moon that his rehabilitation is scheduled to begin in earnest. The medics have finally deemed him well enough to relearn how to properly do all the things he used to take for granted—to walk and run and bend and twist and lift, and, eventually, to fight and jump as dragoons do once again. He has been walking a bit for a few weeks now, but only short distances, and only with aid. It’s humiliating, for one as ferociously independent as he, to need the help of a hospitalier or, worse, Alberic, to climb in and out of bed and use the toilet. He hopes that, with the advent of his re-training, he will soon be able to leave this chapter of his life behind him, though what he has to return to is a question he dares not examine in any great detail.

On the first morning, he is eager but reserved, and by the afternoon, he is shattered. It is only the beginning.

He never could have imagined the hardship of it. It’s like his initial dragoon training all over again—days that left him bled dry and on the brink, too exhausted even to cry—only worse. Then, soreness had seeped into his bones, muscles so stiff and aching he moved like a man thrice his age, but there too had been ascendancy in the doing. Now, he has no comrades to urge him on, no one to best or to admire. This work, he does alone, and it is the work of the banal. Everyone else can already do that which he must relearn.

In the mirror he looks beyond his haggard face and sees his younger self, scarce two years past, and he remembers that man, the one who arose each morning with steel in his spine, confident that all the pain and suffering would amount to something, would give him the tools he needed to fight, to win, to become Azure Dragoon and rain grief and ruin upon his enemies as they had done to him.

That man had been wrong. So appallingly, colossally wrong. If he had even a fraction of the energy, he might have laughed about it, hateful and derisive, drowning in self-disgust. But he has not the energy. He has no energy at all. Reclaiming his body—the tool he had always, always taken for granted, even as he had studied and learned its every strength and limit like a chocobo breeder his mounts’—takes everything he has. Every arrogant overestimation of his own ability. Every stubborn refusal to admit his own defeat.

It is crushing. In the afternoons Alberic sits by his side and strokes his hair as he dozes, too tired even to speak. He tries to muster some liveliness for Aymeric, to deliver on his promise to practice his chess and poker, but he keeps nodding off mid-move, hands dropping into his lap and revealing his cards, or knocking the pieces over on the board. Eventually, Aymeric gently pries these things from Estinien’s faltering grip, and he too simply sits by his side as the dragoon succumbs to his exhaustion and sleeps.

If, after a few days, Estinien feels Aymeric’s long fingers timidly sink into his white hair as he drifts off, softly brushing the thick, coarse locks away from his face, it is at least quite easy to convince himself that he is merely dreaming.

  
* * * * *

  
The deepest, coldest weeks of winter and the worst, most challenging work of his recovery coincide. Every morning is frigid, every day filled with exertion and frustration and pain, every evening a short, brutally inadequate relief as he stares out the window knowing the next day will just be more of the same. Estinien is so tired, so _fucking_ tired, despondency twining up his belly and through his ribs, settling into his marrow like the snow settles on the window muntins. He can continue to do this, he knows he can, but he is no longer certain he wants to.

Alberic is with him when, one day, after lunch, these dark thoughts finally breach the barrier of his teeth. Slumped against the headboard, propped up with pillows, every inch of him aching and sore, he speaks in a low, weary voice.

“Maybe it would have been better to have died.”

Alberic’s fingers suddenly dig into his arm, his foster-father’s grip still strong and bruising even after thirteen years’ retirement from active combat service. Then, just as suddenly, they release, but he leaves his hand in place, as if unwilling to pull away.

“I understand why you feel that way,” he says quietly. “But I beg of you, do not fall prey to despair. You will triumph over this, Estinien.”

“If I had been Azure Dragoon…” Estinien begins. He swallows thickly, brows furrowing. He has never allowed himself the luxury of this speculation, but he can no longer muster the strength to resist its siren call. “…I would have fared better.”

Alberic shifts in his seat, is quiet for a long moment before responding.

“Perhaps,” he says, at last. “Perhaps not. The power of the Azure Dragoon…” he trails off. “It comes at a price.”

Estinien forces his eyes open, turns his head to look at Alberic. The former Azure Dragoon wears an expression Estinien doesn’t think he’s ever before seen on him, his gaze long and glassy, face heavy and lined. He looks a decade beyond his actual age. With a heavy sigh he meets Estinien’s eyes.

“I think 'tis time I told you the truth,” he says, very quietly.

Some sick feeling plumes up through Estinien’s stomach and chest, crowds into his throat, some instinct instantly awakened—dread, apprehension, anxiety—he cannot name it but whatever Alberic is about to reveal, Estinien knows, he _knows_ , that it will be momentous. He narrows his eyes.

“What truth?”

“About the Eye,” Alberic answers. “And Ferndale.”

  
* * * * *

  
So Alberic tells Estinien. Tells him that the Eye of Nidhogg is not simply a conduit for the dread wyrm’s power, but for his mind and heart, as well. Through it spill whispers and emotions—rage and pain, hatred and bloodlust, seductive as a lover’s touch. If an Azure Dragoon is not careful, they will lose themselves to it and become naught but Nidhogg’s thrall, all their power subsumed and instead turned upon the very people they wished to protect. ‘Tis a truth of which Alberic had been entirely ignorant when he himself had been chosen by the Eye to take up the mantle of Azure Dragoon some fifteen years gone.

“And you shared it not with me, even as you knew I could have been Azure Dragoon myself,” Estinien says, slowly. His mouth tightens. “And neither have you shared it with Heustienne.”

Alberic shakes his head slowly, and Estinien suddenly sees something else within his foster-father: guilt. Shame. Alberic closes his pale eyes and looks away.

“’Tis not all, Estinien. When I…” his voice catches in his throat. “When I battled Nidhogg thirteen years ago, during his eighth awakening… the Eye nearly claimed me. I managed to prevail against him but I immediately renounced my powers. I wished not to fall to his influence. And.” Estinien can see the effort it takes for Alberic to open his eyes and return his gaze to his own. “When I did, when I had no more power left than any other Knight Dragoon… that was when the Horde fell upon Ferndale.”

Estinien suddenly feels as if he is far away, as if he is floating, watching himself from outside his own body. Bile crowds his throat, needle points of heat and shock prickle along his arms and the back of his neck.

“You… you always told me Ferndale burned in Nidhogg’s rampage,” Estinien says, his voice barely a whisper. “You said you were too hurt to continue to wield the Eye…” He has heard this story _so many times_ —how Nidhogg had terrorized Coerthas, rampaging across the land and burning towns and villages to ashes. How Alberic, Azure Dragoon, had pursued him until, on the emerald plains of the Eastern Highlands, they’d met at last in battle. After a brutal fight Alberic had managed to land a devastating blow to the empty eye socket in Nidhogg’s skull, the hole from which Ishgard’s precious relic had been carved a thousand years before, and drive him to flee back to his lair, but such had been his injuries that the Eye’s power had abandoned him, leaving him battered and weakened, even in his triumph.

Slowly, Alberic shakes his head, and there are glistening droplets at the corners of his eyes. “I know. ‘Twas not the truth. I fought Nidhogg while Ferndale yet stood. That close to the great wyrm, I could feel his mind invading mine, and I feared what would occur were mine own will to falter. I gave up the power of Azure Dragoon as soon as he retreated, but…” his voice drops to a whisper. “I failed to account for the remnants of his Horde. They made for Ferndale, and without the Eye, I could do naught against them.”

“You could have stopped them,” Estinien says as the understanding washes through him, ice flooding his veins. “You could have stopped them and you didn’t because you were _too afraid of the power you had trained half your life to wield_.”

“Estinien,” Alberic begins, “’Tis not—”

“ _Get out._ ” Estinien wants to shout but he cannot, his throat is too dry, too tight, for his voice to do anything but crack in anguish. He is an orphan because Alberic had given up. He is an orphan because Alberic had been a thrall, not to Nidhogg, but to fear. He is an orphan because Alberic had failed, and knowing this _Alberic had yet dared to take him as his own._

“Estinien, please—”

“ _Get. Out._ ” 

This time he lunges forward as if to shove the man he has until now thought of as a second father, but he cannot make the full distance to where Alberic sits a few fulms away from the edge of the bed, and instead slumps pathetically, half off the mattress, nearly toppling to the floor. Alberic’s hands are under his arms, tenderly lifting him, and Estinien thrashes wildly, if ineffectively, against the hold, cursing Alberic, his weakness, his _thirteen years of lies._ He manages to catch him across the face and feels the satisfying solidity of the blow; he knows he has struck true. Alberic finally dumps him fully back into his hospital bed and steps quickly away, touching his lip where Estinien’s fist has split it.

They stare at each other for a few moments, a trickle of blood staining Alberic’s fingers where they press to his mouth, Estinien’s breath heaving in his chest. Fat tears well in the old dragoon’s eyes, spill down his face in a torrent, and Estinien feels the burn in the back of his nose, the constriction behind his tongue that tells him he, too, hovers close to weeping.

“I am so sor—”

“Go _fuck_ yourself,” he snarls, at last finding the strength to hurl the words as nastily as he wants. He chokes back the sob that threatens to tear from his throat and swallows. “For the last time. _Get. Out._ ”

The look on Alberic’s face is haunted, laced with pain and shame and self-recrimination. It tears at Estinien’s heart as, even in his rage, memories flood his mind: Alberic filling his teacup at breakfast. Alberic tying his hair back in a tail to keep it out of his face while he trained. Alberic comforting him when he awoke plagued by nightmares of fire and smoke.

 _Nightmares that he could have prevented,_ Estinien reminds himself, resolve hardening.

It is Alberic who surrenders first. _Typical_ , Estinien thinks, viciously. Shoulders sagging, he drops his gaze, tear tracts darkening his cheeks. Without another word, he turns and leaves, shutting the door gently behind him.

When he is gone, Estinien collapses into the pillows, chest heaving. He tries, he really, truly, _tries_ to not remember—digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets hard enough to hurt—but this, of all things, he cannot suppress. His mind’s eye is as uncaring as Nidhogg’s, and it shows him, yet again, with all the clarity of crystal, what he’d seen when he’d run down that hill back toward the town on the day that Ferndale had burned: the bodies of his family, his mother and father burned to death, skin blackened and flaking and stinking, and his brother, crushed by a collapsing wall, white hair spread across the tiles of the floor as red blood seeped from beneath the crumbled brick and mortar.

It is too much to bear. All the exhaustion and rage and anguish crowd into the back of his throat, burning hot and razor sharp. Estinien holds his breath until he can no longer, until the air leaves his lungs in a violent sob, and he cries himself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all very much for your patience! I'm sure you've noticed the chapter count has increased. Yeah. This project may have gotten a tad bit out of hand, but I think it will be worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warning: this chapter contains discussion of, and reference to, childhood sexual assault.**
> 
> It's not graphic, but it's there. Please take care of yourselves. ♥

A week passes, then two. Estinien lets his anger and his grief be his strength. Such territory is familiar, almost comforting. For almost as long as he can remember his stubbornness and rage have fueled him, and though that flame had been extinguished when the Eye of Nidhogg had chosen Heustienne instead of him as its bearer, the revelation of Alberic’s years-long deception has seen it rekindled. Now, at least, he can channel this new furor into his rehabilitation as he once channeled it into his training. Every day of the week save one finds him in the oldest and shabbiest of the Temple Knights’ indoor arenas, the Knights Hospitalier putting him through his paces like a horsebird at auction. They make him walk and correct his gait to prevent long-term limping. They make him run and do the same. They make him lift weights over his head and balance on one foot and they manipulate his arms through full rotations to loosen his shoulders. They assign him stretches and squats and all manner of calisthenics.

Estinien does it all with grim determination and without complaint, though it leaves him as weary and depleted as it ever has. His ribs ache as he gasps for breath through the endless, monotonous laps and sets, legs stiff and leaden; thick drops of his sweat patter into the dirt of the arena as he reaches to touch his toes. He remembers the days when with barest effort he could bend those legs to send himself sailing through the air like a dart, and effortlessly put his forehead to his shins. He will earn himself those days again. The pain and the exertion and the slow, plodding progress are his focus, and never once does he acknowledge, or even allow that he has noticed, the familiar, brown-haired figure that is always standing vigil from atop the rickety bleachers.

The old dragoon’s gaze burns into his back like embers. He ignores it, tells himself Alberic’s guilt is of neither concern nor consequence. Estinien is healing well. He will recover and return to the ranks of the Knights Dragoon. This he repeats to himself, a stoic mantra. His strength is, and has ever been, born solely of himself. When his day’s work is done he returns to the infirmary, spine straight, chin proudly lifted, each step deliberate and confident.

As soon as the door is closed upon the bathing chambers he mechanically strips his clothing, gritting his teeth through the ache in his arms, steps into the water drawn as hot as he can stand it, and collapses in abject exhaustion.

  
* * * * *

  
If Aymeric notices Alberic’s sudden absence, he says nothing. In the evenings when he visits they play their card games and board games like they have for weeks, and by now Estinien is once again able to stay awake long enough for at least one full match of poker or checkers, usually. He tends to lose even more badly than before, however, enough so that when one evening he manages to give Aymeric a solid run for his money at chess, he suspects that the sly urchin has taken pity on him.

Estinien hates to be pitied.

He tells Aymeric so, says not to go easy on him just because he’s still convalescing. Aymeric laughs and throws him one of his wicked little grins, assures Estinien that he will not hold back. The dragoon shall get his wish. Then he proceeds to mercilessly crush him, like peppercorns in a mortar, at every game they play for the next week.

Somewhere in his heart, Estinien feels he should be far more upset by this than he is. Instead, it is the light of his very dark days indeed, and it almost becomes a game in itself, to discover in which creative new way Aymeric will outmaneuver him this time. He can’t really say why, but even when he’s down to about six active pieces in a chess match—all his lost rooks and pawns and knights standing like headstones around Aymeric’s side of the board—he finds the playful gleam in the clever thief’s eyes pulls him in and dissipates, somehow, the irritation he knows would harry him were he such a consistent victim to any other opponent. There’s simply something about that striking blue gaze, alight with mischief, and the roguish, self-satisfied smile that both precedes and follows a devastating coup de grâce, that makes Estinien willing to throw himself at this unyielding wall again and again. To see Aymeric’s impossibly handsome face flushed with impish delight is a dear prize in and of itself, one that paradoxically only comes with losing.

Or, at least, Estinien assumes it only comes with losing. He’s never won one of their matches, so he cannot truly say.

With Aymeric around, it is easier, too, to ignore the quiet of his infirmary room now that Alberic is banished from it. To ignore the strange little pin prick within his chest whenever he retires for the day and finds no one there to greet him. Aymeric still tends to arrive around the same time he always has, and it’s a relief to hear the light tread of his boots on the floorboards, the rich timbre of his voice filling the cold corners with their warm sound. He is a welcome distraction from everything, and Estinien embraces it without hesitation. Better simply to do, and not to dwell.

One night, after the poker match that Estinien has, again, lost—bluffed into folding while Aymeric held naught but a pair of nines, it had turned out—he is sitting on his bed, legs stretched out before him and halfway to dozing, when Aymeric clears his throat. Estinien lifts his eyes to find him idly shuffling the deck, riffling them between skilled and practiced hands. The lengths of those deft and slender fingers effortlessly manipulating the worn and well-used cards draw his attention as certainly as any dragon, soaring along the horizon, ever has.

“I won’t be able to come by for a few days,” Aymeric says. He tilts his head to one side. “Got work to do.”

Estinien’s first instinct is, unexpectedly, to frown, which he manages to suppress. Something constricts inside his chest, scraping at his heart with shocking ferocity, some fierce instinct that he, just as instinctively, knows he cannot indulge.

“I see,” he replies.

The cards waterfall one last time in Aymeric’s hands before he slides them into their shabby case. He places the deck at the center of the little table they use to play now that Estinien is no longer bedridden, and stands.

“I’d best be off for now,” he says. He throws Estinien one of his signature cheeky little smiles but, where normally it at least provokes in Estinien the desire to return it, if not always the action, tonight it holds no allure.

Estinien swings his legs over the edge of his bed and climbs to his feet—still more slowly than he would like, but the fact that he can do it unaided at all is a vast improvement from before Heavensturn.

“Aye,” he manages. “I shall see you whenever you come back, then.”

Even to his own ears, there is something odd about his tone, something strained and… almost petulant. Aymeric’s eyes narrow, just slightly, flashing momentarily like summer lightning over the highlands. Estinien’s sullenness hasn’t escaped him. They stand, awkwardly facing each other, and Estinien forces himself past whatever strange impulse it is that makes him want to sulk about Aymeric’s forthcoming absence like a moody adolescent. He has no claim to Aymeric’s time, and he knows it.

“Take care, Aymeric,” he manages, more softly, this time. “Be… be safe.”

Without realizing it, Estinien has lifted his hand, as if to push a sumptuous lock of that raven-black hair away from his urchin’s face. Catching himself just in time, he drops his arm back down to his side instead, nodding stiffly. Aymeric gives him a strange, apprising look, his face hard as he returns Estinien’s nod.

“Aye,” he replies, cocking one eyebrow. “Me guardian dragoon won’t be out and about to rescue me from the rooftops should I run afoul of another lord.”

Estinien very nearly—he doesn’t, but, oh, it is so close—flinches. Aymeric’s eyes glitter like knives, his tight smile just as brutally sharp. 

“No,” Estinien manages to say. “He won’t.”

There are no more words between them that night as Aymeric shrugs into his coat, and with one last shrewd and knowing look back over his shoulder, departs.

  
* * * * *

  
Snow falls in heavy fat flakes outside, visible through Estinien’s infirmary window. From his position sitting on the edge of his bed facing the door, he cannot see it, and is glad of it. Valentione’s Day has come and gone and he has spent it alone, neither Alberic nor Aymeric as visitors for the holiday. In its way ‘tis the same as it always has been, and yet, something about it presses heavier and more solemnly upon him than in years past. For all that Estinien has spent the majority of his life alone, loneliness itself is a new and unwelcome experience.

The occasional gust of wind rattles the glass, reminding him to be grateful that his work for the day is done and he need not venture outdoors again before the morrow. He buries his face in his hands and rubs either side of his nose with his fingers; he still wears naught but his towel following his bath after his daily rehabilitation work and the temptation is strong to simply to crawl beneath his bedsheets and find the oblivion of sleep, but he will miss supper if he does so and he is ravenously hungry. He needs to dress himself and finish drying his hair, but the tasks loom before him like mountains, and instead he sits unmoving. The room is so quiet, so empty, and he has no one to help him now that…

A hollow longing twinges in his chest. He curls his lip.

There is a sharp rap at the door and he lifts his head, hope brimming despite himself. Yet the person who pushes their way inside—without waiting for an answer, he notes—is one he has not seen since before the deployment that made of him an invalid.

“Hello, Ser Estinien,” says the Azure Dragoon.

He blinks up at Heustienne. She looks as well as ever, tall and imposing in her unmarred strength, though he’s not certain he recalls such dark circles beneath her violet eyes. She is dressed in a set of Temple Knights-issue cold weather clothing—boots and trousers and heavy cloak—not unlike those that Estinien bestowed upon Aymeric the winter before. Locks of her blond hair trail from beneath her woolen cap to lightly frame her face.

He suddenly remembers his state of undress, and reaches to pull a blanket about him. Heustienne rolls her eyes.

“You’ve nothing I haven’t already seen,” she says.

“What do you want?” he asks.

She throws him a bemused look. “To see to my man’s recovery,” she answers. “As your commanding officer, I am in fact concerned with your well-being, ser dragoon. Speaking of which.” She eyes him, nearly nude as he is, then goes to the woodpile stacked against the wall by the hearth and picks a log to add to the fire. “’Tis cold as Halone’s hell in here.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he replies, a bald-faced lie. He had, it was simply easier to be cold than to force his aching body to rise and take care of it himself. Heustienne turns back to face him and crosses her arms, brow furrowed, clearly distrustful of his answer. Well, let her distrust it.

“I have been speaking with the Knights Hospitalier,” she says. “They are pleased with your progress. I am told that you shall be well enough to return to us by springtime—sometime in the Second Umbral Moon, or thereabouts. Are you in agreement with this assessment?”

Estinien considers this. It is late in the First Umbral Moon now, so that would give him another seven or so weeks as an infirmary patient before being discharged. He knows he will not yet be ready for active service at that time—he will, as Heustienne stated, simply go back to training with his fellow dragoons, the final stage in his recovery before he is again fit to serve his nation as a dragonslayer.

Something in his belly twists at the thought.

“Aye,” he answers. “If I continue as I have, I think that sounds right.”

Heustienne nods curtly. “Good. We shall be glad of your return.” She pauses. “I apologize for not sooner visiting. The Dravanians have been highly active these last few moons and we have been stretched thin. Our deployments, including my own, have been nearly continuous.” Her voice quiets. “The Knights Dragoon have keenly felt your absence, Ser Estinien.”

He knows not how to respond to that, and so is silent.

After a moment, Heustienne continues. “We shall have new recruits this spring, as well. Having an experienced dragoon such as yourself to train with would doubtless be a boon to their development, and your feedback on their suitability for the order would be of great value to me.”

Estinien blinks, surprised by the import she clearly means to place upon his potential opinions. He has always thought of her as a rival, an opponent… an obstacle that he ultimately failed to overcome. Which, perhaps she is indeed those things—or was, once—but it now occurs to him, too, that she is also his comrade, and has been, all the while.

“Oh,” he says.

Heustienne smiles and shakes her head, just slightly.

“Unfortunate mishaps at the Stone Vigil aside, Ser Estinien,” she says, “you are an exceptional dragoon. I would not see that skill go to waste.” The Azure Dragoon inclines her head and turns to leave. “We shall speak again soon. Have a good afternoon.”

“Ser Heustienne,” Estinien says, stopping her.

She turns back.

“I—I need to tell you something.” He dearly fears he will regret bringing this up but after the regard she has shown him, he knows he will regret it if he doesn’t. “About the Eye of Nidhogg.”

Both of her eyebrows raise and one corner of her lip twitches, bemused. “Indeed? And what do _you_ know of the dread wyrm’s Eye?”

The dig is subtle, but not so subtle that he doesn’t notice. He chooses to ignore it, and presses on. “It can influence your thoughts,” he says. “Through the Eye, Nidhogg can invade your mind with his own.” He swallows. “Ser Alberic told me.”

“He told me as well, Ser Estinien.”

That is unexpected. Heustienne tilts her head to one side. “In fact,” she goes on, “he told me but these three days past, on the very eve that I returned to the city.”

“…I see,” Estinien replies.

“When did he tell you?” she asks.

“A while ago,” he answers.

“Curious,” she replies. “I wonder why?”

Estinien shrugs, forcing himself to remain relaxed, to betray no inkling of the way his lungs and heart seem to cease at the thought of the true answer to her question. As feared, he is regretting having broached this topic.

Heustienne hums thoughtfully. “Well, I thank you for your concern on my behalf, Ser Estinien. Recover well, and we shall soon count you amongst our ranks once more.”

With that, she strides out of the room, and is gone.

  
* * * * *

  
Aymeric also comes by that evening. He is somewhat later arriving than usual, and seems in good spirits. Speaking of spirits, as they sit across the table from each other for their customary cards, Estinien fancies he can smell them on the wily Brume rat’s breath, sharp and sour. He considers; if Aymeric is drunk, he might have a fighting chance. He doesn’t seem inebriated, but, well, some people are good at hiding it. Figuring the risk is worth it—they don’t play for real money, anyway—he decides to bet big.

And loses. Decidedly.

Estinien can’t help but laugh. It’s so ludicrously predictable at this point—how is it that he keeps trying, anyway?—and yet, that very predictability only fuels his enjoyment. It’s a ritual by now, really, and like all rituals, its comfort is in its familiarity.

Aymeric rewards him with the flash of a grin. “You played fast and loose tonight, Ser Estinien.”

This time, Estinien does manage to smile back. “I thought maybe your drinking might have given me an opening.”

Aymeric laughs, a real one, something Estinien doesn’t think he’s ever heard from him. “A shot or two of brandy won’t dull me senses _that_ much, Ser Estinien,” he retorts.

“Gods, I could do with some brandy.” Estinien snorts. “Hospitaliers prohibit alcohol in the infirmary.”

“Shame,” Aymeric replies. “Well, we’ll have to pay a visit to the Forgotten Knight again once you’re out, eh?”

“Aye,” Estinien says. It’s a bit of a surprise to realize he hasn’t given much thought to that—to the little mundane things he might do once he’s released that don’t relate to his work as a dragoon. It is perhaps because, in the past, he never gave much thought to them, either.

“Well.” His chair’s legs scrape against the floor as Aymeric stands, stretching. “Got to be on me way again, for the night.”

Something drops in Estinien’s stomach, an acute twinge of disappointment. Aymeric was later than usual in arriving and now he’s earlier than usual in leaving. It sends needles searing through his skin, bile rising in his throat. Calmly, trying to betray no sense of the turmoil he feels, he begins to gather the cards into a pile on the table.

“Off to see another client then?” he asks. He swears he’s nonchalant. He swears he doesn’t care, he’s just making small talk. He swears there isn’t that unmistakable edge to his voice, that his face hasn’t fallen into childish churlishness, that the hot vice that grips his chest isn’t—

 _Jealousy_.

Aymeric’s entire demeanor shifts. His expression loses its standard impertinence, becomes cool and shrewd. He drags his eyes across Estinien, evaluating, and it reminds him of nothing so much as the way Heustienne did so herself, just a few bells before.

“Don’t like it, do you, Ser Estinien?” Aymeric asks. There is a challenge in that dark, alluring voice, oh this is treacherous ground, and Estinien knows it, but he—foolhardy, reckless, proud—has never been one to surrender.

Estinien sets his jaw. “’Tis a sin against Halone.”

Aymeric’s face smooths over even further, into something truly cold, aloof as a noble and just as contemptuous.

“Ah, the goodly Knight Dragoon,” he replies, his words all laced with scorn, “at last concerning himself with such things.”

Aymeric lowers his brilliant eyes, idly picks at his nails, then lifts them again. They blaze like twin suns, burning his gaze into Estinien’s own. “But such a pious man should know ’tis an equal sin, for one man to desire another.”

Shame flares through Estinien’s face like dragonfire, the heat in his cheeks enough to rival that of the hearth. He has felt dragon’s jaws close about his body, and at some level he realizes he is throwing himself into more of the same, teeth that will chew him up and spit him out just as painfully, and yet, consummate soldier that he is, he soldiers on.

“You sell your body to them.”

“And you sell your body to the war.” Aymeric’s smile is tight as a drawn bowstring. “We’re both whores, Ser Estinien, though no one is dead when I’m done with my service.”

The retort is past Estinien’s lips before he even realizes he’s speaking.

“You might be, if the wrong lady’s lord discovers you.”

“Or the wrong lord’s lady,” he replies, never looking away. “But you’re one to talk about the risks to oneself in the course of service, aren’t you?” Aymeric tilts his head ever so minutely to the side, flicking his narrowed eyes disdainfully up and down Estinien’s form, and the dragoon is reminded of when he’d confronted him in the alleyway off the thoroughfare of the Jeweled Crozier the previous year, what seems now like a lifetime ago.

Estinien opens his mouth, the closes it, biting back whatever response he might have spoken. Because, he realizes, Aymeric is right. Because he does sell himself, as certainly as Aymeric, and when the Holy See tells him to jump, he jumps—onto rooftops or into heretics’ encampments or onto the backs of wyverns above the Stone Vigil. They pay him for it in gold and if he pays for it with his life, well, such is the cost of war. They are orphans both, the two of them, and what is the value of an orphan to a nation of aristocrats where worth can only be inherited? Estinien has his prowess in battle; Aymeric has his beauty: chattels to be claimed and directed by their betters, deployed and consumed on terms not their own.

Would Estinien, too, be one to dictate his terms to another?

“Aymeric—” he begins. “Wait.”

Aymeric watches him with a face carved of stone, his mouth a thin line. 

“Forgive me.” Estinien swallows. “’Tis true that I find you beautiful. I would be a liar and a fool to pretend otherwise. But… ‘tis not the reason I enjoy your company.”

“Then what is, Ser Estinien?”

The words bubble up from within him and stick in his throat. Part of him recoils at the thought of speaking them aloud, whispers that he should not say this, that naught but regret can come of such an admission, but Estinien, for all his gruffness and guarded reserve, has never been a good liar. When he opens his mouth the truth bleeds out like a wound.

“You make me want to keep living.”

Aymeric’s lips part and his eyes widen, the hard look on his face melting away to something else. Shock, perhaps, or sorrow, or both. Estinien’s own face is red and burning, he can feel it. The admission shames him, leaves him fearful and scraped raw. His recovery he has taken day by agonizing day, refusing to look beyond to what lay for him ahead, because truly, he has no idea. His future is a black and starless sky, a great empty sprawl of _nothing_. No ambition. No purpose. No real family, no real friends. He had poured everything into trying to become Azure Dragoon, bet every last chip on the hand that fate had dealt him and fate had seen fit to bluff him blind. Now he is nearly healed, and he is to return to the ranks of the dragoons, and it scares him almost witless. How long can he last against the Dravanians before he is here again, or worse? Six moons ago he had cared not if death claimed him, but now… he looks into the morning glory blue of Aymeric’s eyes, and he knows nothing of what comes next, but he knows he wishes to find out.

Their mutual silence stretches so long that Estinien’s hands clench against the table top, the leaden fear of vulnerability sliding into his gut. He drops his gaze to his lap and closes his eyes. He knows Aymeric has never much cared for knights, and he knows that now, he has only served to confirm his urchin’s worst assumptions.

After some time, he hears the creak of the chair as Aymeric retakes his seat across from him.

“Ser Estinien—”

“Don’t call me ser,” Estinien interrupts. He still does not look up. “There is… there is no need.”

Aymeric is quiet a moment.

“Estinien…” he begins again, but trails off, falling quiet.

Estinien shakes his head. “Don’t be late on my account. You have your work, as do we all.” At last he raises his head to meet Aymeric’s striking, scintillate eyes. “You have to make a living. I don’t begrudge you that. I just…” He swallows. “I just miss you, when you’re gone.”

Aymeric opens his mouth to say something and Estinien rushes to speak before he can.

“But I must get used to it again,” he continues. “I am nearly done here. I’ll go back to the ranks of the Knights Dragoon, and they shall deploy me again.”

Aymeric’s face darkens. He fiddles with the cards on the table, pulling the corners back and letting them snap against his fingertips, ruining the pile that Estinien had earlier constructed.

“Estinien…”

“Go on, Aymeric,” Estinien says, softly. It hurts to urge him to leave. He doesn’t want him to go; doesn’t want to lie alone in his bed and imagine the things Aymeric will be doing in the bed he will tonight share with another. But there are many things that have happened that Estinien hasn’t wanted. He has learned to live with them, to varying degrees. He will live with this, as well.

Aymeric stands again, his expression unreadable.

“I’ll see you later, then, Estinien,” he says, and is gone.

  
* * * * *

  
It is not quite a week before Aymeric visits him again.

The day has been a particularly troublesome one for Estinien, the Hospitaliers are pushing him again, testing his limits further. Ever stubborn, he is determined to meet and surpass whatever standards they see fit to set for him, but it takes its toll as always. Exhausted, after supper he climbs into bed and leans back against the pillows, eyes falling shut.

He is not quite dozing when he hears the knock. At his affirmative call, the door opens, and Aymeric’s familiar figure steps into the room. Estinien stills, heart racing. He’d been nearly too afraid to hope, despite his apology before, that the handsome young rogue would return. Yet here he is, black hair studded white with snowflakes, pale cheeks blushing from the cold, wry smile curling his lips.

“Hullo,” he says.

“Hello,” Estinien replies. He hesitates a moment, then adds. “Would you like to sit?”

Aymeric nods, a few ringlets shaking out of place. He pulls a chair over from the table—when Alberic had spent every eve with Estinien, the bedside chair had been a fixture—and sits.

They neither seem to know what to say.

“Are you doing well?” Estinien eventually asks.

Aymeric’s face softens.

“Aye,” he says. “I’m well.” His eyebrows raise as he adds, “Seems I should be asking after you, though.”

Estinien huffs softly. “Aye. I’m well. Or… about as well as I can be, I suppose.”

Aymeric makes some small noise of acknowledgment and looks at his hands. “I, uh.” He raises his head again, a small frown creasing his brows. “I should tell you something.”

“Oh?” Now Estinien, too, frowns.

“I’ve been talking to Ser Alberic.”

Estinien’s frown becomes a scowl. “I’ve no interest in hearing whatever it is he means to relay through you.”

Aymeric shakes his head. “He didn’t ask me to tell you anything. I saw him at the Knight the other day and joined him for a drink.”

…As he had done with Estinien, at the end of last winter, when spring had just been beginning to creep its way back across Coerthas. Estinien looks down at his hands, still frowning.

“And?”

He hears Aymeric shift in his seat and take a deep breath. For once the cheeky Brume rat seems genuinely uncertain and Estinien clenches his fingers around the blanket over his legs, anxiety winding its way around his ribs to squeeze at his lungs like a snake around its prey.

“He told me what happened at Ferndale,” Aymeric says.

“Did he tell you that he lied about it?” Estinien snaps. “For my entire life?”

“Aye.”

Estinien’s hands have balled into fists, white-knuckled and tense.

“He talked about you the entire time,” Aymeric says. “About how he remembers you as a boy. About how proud of you he is. About how… how sorry he is and how much he’d like—”

“I thought you said you’d nothing to relay,” Estinien interrupts, his voice nearly a snarl.

“He didn’t ask me to share. ‘Tis just…” Aymeric sighs. “You have family. You shouldn’t throw it away for pride.”

“I had a family,” Estinien retorts. “And Alberic wasn’t it.”

“He cared enough to adopt you.”

Estinien stills, finally looks over. Aymeric’s eyes are on the ground, his hands folded in his lap.

Aymeric was never adopted. Whoever his birth parents were, they had discarded him, uncaring how or by whom he was raised, as long as it didn’t have to be them. How long had he, as a young boy, hoped against hope, that someone would look at him and say, _Aye, I want him to be my son._

How long until that hope had been extinguished?

Shame crawls up Estinien’s spine and burrows into his skin, hot as dragonfire.

Eventually, Aymeric speaks, his voice small and wistful.

“Will you tell me about them?” he asks. “Your family. I—I’ve always wondered… what it would be like.”

Estinien glances over at his foundling friend. The expression on Aymeric’s face is something akin to hopeful, almost longing, and guilt winds itself around the shame. For someone who has never known family at all, even the tragedy of one lost is but a distant dream. He opens his mouth, then hesitates. His chest suddenly constricts, aching, as the images bloom in his mind like Nymeia lilies: his mother, humming to herself as she collects the beeswax for candle-making, her honey-brown hair swept up and out of her face. His father, tall and lean, striding back from the farthest pasture, a bleating lamb slung over his broad shoulders. His little brother, round-faced and grinning, splashing through some muddy creek bed on a quest of summertime exploration.

Since the day the dragons took them all from him he has done everything in his power to forget. Now Aymeric asks him to remember.

Swallowing, Estinien nods, and begins to tell the tales he has never before shared with anyone, not even Alberic.

  
* * * * *

  
They lived in a cottage at the edge of the village, at the base of a hill leading up to the pastures. The farmyard out back they shared with their neighbors—the collective flock of chickens ruled the lot like a band of petty lords, fearlessly harrying any small children that dared traverse their territory. One of Estinien’s first childhood duties had been to collect his family’s share of the eggs every morning, a simple enough chore if the brooding hen were away from her nest, more complicated if he had needed to shove his hand beneath her while she roosted. He can still remember the mild sting of a sharp little beak pecking at his skin.

They were shepherds, as were many Coerthan peasant families. They raised an old lineage of highland karakul, long bred for their hearty constitutions and the long-stapled wool that spun up into soft, warm yarn prized by lords and laymen alike. Midsummer heralded the shearing season, days of communal labor that saw the entire village come together to aid in the endeavor; men herding, mustering, and shearing the sheep; women sorting, cleaning, and drying the fleeces; children running to and fro delivering whetstones and water, rags and basins, or savory pasties fresh from the bakery ovens. The first, and only, time Estinien had been allowed to help his father with his shearing, at the beginning of his twelfth summer, had been the last that would see Ferndale standing.

Yet as he now thinks of his parents, what he recalls most strongly is the singing. His mother, softly crooning old Coerthan folk songs as she pedaled her foot on the spinning wheel’s treadle, or kneaded dough for bread on the sturdy table by the kitchen hearth. His father, whistling little tunes as he drove the flock through the fields, Estinien trotting along at his heels with the old sheepdog that helped them keep the rams in line. Both Estinien and his brother had inherited their father’s snowy white hair and upward-pointing ears, though Estinien had gotten his mother’s deep blue eyes and slender frame.

To think of Hamignant is the hardest. Less than two years younger than Estinien, he had nonetheless seen him as somewhat of a lamb himself, sweet and fragile, wide-eyed and wondering. Nothing had delighted Estinien more than showing off their little world to his little brother, pointing out which spring wildflowers could be squeezed to release a drop of sweet nectar onto the tongue, or showing him the best place to dig for crayfish in the riverbank. He remembers his father’s booming laughter whenever the two boys had brought back little treasures back from their roaming, the joy his mother had taken in hearing them recount their adventures over dinner. They had been close companions, local explorers, mischief makers. The world was wider with a friend at your side, and Estinien can still see the broad grin across Hamignant’s face as they pestered some poor ground squirrel ‘til it chattered at them like an angry merchant, or chased fireflies in the summer dusk.

It is in recalling these tales, in particular, that Estinien blinks and notices, with gentle surprise, that tears have escaped the corners of his eyes and slid down his face to drip onto the blankets in his lap.

“Forgive me,” he says, turning his head away and scrubbing at his cheeks with the back of his hand. But as he squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his teeth, he finds that the memories only brighten in his mind, only come into ever sharper focus: the scent of hay drying in the fields at the end of the summer, the white and frothing herds of sheep pouring down the hillsides in woolen cataracts, the feel of his father’s strong embrace and the taste of his mother’s homemade stew and the sound of Hamignant’s delighted laughter, ringing like a bell.

The floodgates have burst.

Estinien curls his knees up under his chin and covers his face with his hands as the grief overwhelms him, pouring out in a deluge. Shame tightens his belly as well, that he has lost control before a witness, that he—a soldier, a knight, a _dragonslayer_ —weeps in his bed like a little boy. Yet no matter how he berates himself, tries to tell himself that he is stronger than this, he finds he cannot stop. There is an ache in his chest as though a stone sits upon it, and he knows in the marrow of his bones that it isn’t new, that ever has this anguish lurked beneath it all, that all his rage and ruthless ambition has always, ultimately, been in the service of pressing it back, back, back into the darkest recesses of his heart. To bear it before the light was to fall, screaming, into that day and that hillside and the white smoke stinging in his eyes and the black ash bitter in his mouth and the shrieks of the karakul ringing in his ears and the pulse in his throat and the desperate prayers of, _Please, O Halone, please_ and the terror and the terror and—

“Here,” Aymeric says, his deep voice soft.

A handkerchief appears before him and Estinien stares at it, unseeing, lost in the horror of the past. The square of linen dangles from Aymeric’s slender fingers and almost gleams, though it is worn and discolored, far from snowy white. Nevertheless, it seems to shine before him like a beacon, calling to him to return from where he has drifted, light-headed and unmoored. He reaches to grasp it and their hands meet, the momentary warmth and smooth brush of skin pulling him back into the moment like a needle pulls thread through cloth. With a shuddering breath, he takes the offering and wipes his face, the skin around his eyes puffy and tender to the touch. When he feels himself capable of it, he looks to Aymeric and finds those clear blue eyes watching him with a longing so unmistakable that to see it feels almost like a physical blow.

“You must really have loved them,” Aymeric says, and the lump is in Estinien’s throat again, emotion swelling beneath his tongue and behind his eyes. He drops his gaze to the handkerchief clutched in his grip and nods, stiffly. He had. He had loved his family and his village and his simple country life. He’d never imagined anything more for himself than exactly what he’d been born with and he’d never wanted to, until Nidhogg and his Horde had stolen it all from him and left him no other choice. Even then, his wildest dreams had only been of vengeance—for Ferndale, for his family, for his loss.

And now?

Now he has to imagine something else entirely, somehow. A skill he has never learned.

He looks up to meet Aymeric’s gaze. “Thank you for listening,” he says. His voice is hoarse and raw.

Aymeric nods. “You’re welcome.” He fidgets in his chair, twisting his fingers around themselves. “I…” he trails off and shakes his head. “…It must be difficult to talk about.”

Estinien also nods, slowly. “Aye.” He closes his eyes and the memories bloom anew, the stone-heavy weight again settling onto his chest enough to make it heave as he gasps for breath. But the ache of it is different, now, in a way he cannot articulate. ‘Tis no less heavy…

“But ‘tis good to remember,” he says, softly, opening his eyes.

Aymeric is quiet for a long moment—a very long moment. Something in his normally bright gaze darkens and dulls, his eyes glazing over. Estinien frowns at the sudden change in his demeanor and reaches to lightly touch his arm where it has fallen motionless against his thigh. Aymeric starts like a shot rabbit, violently recoiling, his whole body stiff and eyes round with what is unmistakably fear.

Estinien quickly withdraws his hand.

“Aymeric?” he asks.

Aymeric’s head swivels over to stare at him, and Estinien is wound like a clock, heart in his mouth, throat gone dry.

“…Aymeric?” he asks again.

Aymeric blinks and seems to return to himself. Estinien can see the shift in his shoulders as some of the tension leaves him, though his face remains pinched and drawn.

“S-sorry. Sorry,” he replies at last, in an uncharacteristic stutter. He shakes his head from side to side; rubs one hand across his face and exhales a long and shaky breath.

“What is it?” Estinien asks. He again reaches toward him, then hesitates. He can see Aymeric’s eyes drop to where Estinien hovers his hand above his forearm, then he raises them again and gives the dragoon a minute nod. Estinien lets his hand fall the rest of the way, feeling the sharp solidity of Aymeric’s skinny arm through the rough fabric of his shirt sleeve. Eventually, Aymeric takes a deep breath and throws Estinien a small, apologetic smile.

“’Tis not always so good to remember.”

Estinien tightens his grip, a protective instinct flaring in his belly, along with further needle-sharp twinges of guilt. For all the pain of his own memories, he knows it for the pain of happiness lost. What memories plague Aymeric, who grew up abandoned and unwanted, destined for hardship, the lowest of Ishgard’s low?

“Do you wish to speak of it?” he asks. “There is no obligation,” he amends, quickly.

Aymeric lowers his gaze again and is silent. Estinien squeezes his arm and, before he can stop himself, runs his thumb along Aymeric’s wrist.

“Never mind, then,” he says. “Let’s just play our usual game.” He clears his throat. “Can you stay for that this evening?”

Aymeric lifts his eyes and half-smiles. It remains fragile, but there’s an authenticity to it now, a further relaxing of his frame that blossoms an unexpected, but not unpleasant, heat in the base of Estinien’s belly. He nods. “Aye, I can stay. Let’s play checkers.” His smile widens, regains some of its typical cheek, and his eyes regain some of their sparkle. “Have to give you a fighting chance now, don’t I, Estinien?”

  
* * * * *

  
After that, though nothing substantial seems to change between them, there remains a strangeness in the air when Aymeric is around. He tries to pretend otherwise, Estinien can tell, but by now he knows his irreverent Brume rat well enough, he thinks, to recognize when something feels off. ‘Tis subtle, for sure, but on the nights when he sits with Estinien before his room’s hearth to bet on cards for silly tokens or inexorably maneuver him into checkmate, Estinien can see the seep of dullness into those brilliant eyes, the way the shine leeches from them even in the bright flicker of the fire light and oil lamps.

Nonetheless, Estinien is not one to push. Frankly, he doesn’t really know _how_. What to say to draw someone out of their shell? He certainly has no idea. Still, it is impossible to ignore the way that Aymeric’s charming smile never now stretches into a grin, or the way he begins to stare into the flames, clearly lost to his surroundings, when he should be intently focused on their game. For a handful of days Estinien assumes the melancholy will pass on its own, until the evening comes where, chessboard between them and studded with their respective pieces, Aymeric slides his queen forward several squares and turns his head to face the fire, resting his chin in his palm, leaving his king unguarded to Estinien’s bishop.

Almost hesitantly, Estinien moves the piece into place. “Check,” he says. It is the first time he has managed this.

Aymeric blinks and turns to the board, surprise pulling him back into the waking world. He would be proud of his achievement, Estinien thinks, if something weren’t so obviously wrong. Frowning, Aymeric makes to choose his next move, to guard his king, but Estinien reaches out and stays his hand. Across the little table, their eyes meet.

“Talk to me,” Estinien says.

Aymeric flinches so visibly that it bottoms out Estinien’s stomach, dread like iron settling in his gut. Unconsciously, he curls his fingers around Aymeric’s, scarred and bulky compared to the nimble thief’s own. A pickpocket’s fingers, deft and clever, trembling slightly in Estinien’s grip.

“Something troubles you, Aymeric,” he tries, feeling clumsy and inadequate in his attempt to draw forth his friend. “I can tell. Talk to me.”

Aymeric’s eyes are wide, palest blue, fixed on Estinien’s. His lips part ever so slightly, and with a sharp inhale he seems, suddenly, to sag, shoulders slumping, head drooping forward. Estinien fights to suppress the strange fear that twists in belly and shifts forward to grab Aymeric’s other hand as well, knocking chess pieces onto the floor as he does so and not caring one whit. When the orphaned urchin raises his head once more, unshed tears glitter behind his eyes.

“You’d seen twelve summers when Ferndale burned?” he asks, his voice thick and heavy in his throat.

Tightly, Estinien nods. “Aye,” he answers. “The Horde took Ferndale that autumn.”

Aymeric’s eyes close again, and he visibly swallows. He turns his face away just enough so that one of the heavy locks of his hair falls to obscure it.

“I was also twelve when… when it happened.”

  
* * * * *

  
To be an orphan in Ishgard is no kind fate, this Estinien well knows.

He had believed that he also well knew the extent of that particular unkindness.

In listening to Aymeric, he comes to to understand how very wrong he is.

  
* * * * *

  
The Blessed Halone Sacred Shield Orphanage is run by nuns, stern women who are—or were, for he no longer calls it home—for the most part, by Aymeric’s reckoning, genuinely caring, if not always entirely nurturing. No kisses for scraped knees or cuddles for nightmares, not like the mothers in the storybooks that lined the little in-house library shelves. But there was always warm food and clean clothing and bedding, a genuine interest in the education of the children in their charge, and a fair, if sometimes clinical, enforcement of the rules. The nuns he remembers with respect, if not necessarily fondness.

Once a week, the priests came to take the children’s confessions, assign penance, and absolve them of their sins. There were two. Father Taylor tended to those who had seen fewer than twelve summers, Father Gisoux, those who had seen more.

Father Taylor Aymeric remembers as a quiet, thoughtful hyuran man, who listened solemnly to even the most petty and trivial of a small child’s perceived sins, and offered simple remedies for their inevitably mild discretions.

Father Gisoux…

Aymeric remembers his first confession after his twelfth nameday. He remembers waiting his turn amongst the other children, all in a row on the pews of the little chapel, one by one to go into the booth where they would sit before the priest and name their sins of the week. He remembers Father Gisoux sweeping by on his way to that booth, keen eyes sliding over the children lined up and waiting.

He remembers the way those keen eyes paused, lingering on some of them.

He remembers the way they lingered on himself.

It didn’t happen that week. It didn’t happen the next, either, or the next, or even the week after that.

But at some point, not that long after Father Gisoux had become his confessor, Aymeric remembers stepping into the dim little booth, sliding the wooden door shut behind him, and taking a seat. He remembers the recounting of his boyish sins, though not what they were—as if it matters—and then the old priest was looming before him, strangely close, pulling the front of his robes aside and telling Aymeric he could make his penance a service for one of Halone’s servants.

“Open your mouth,” said Father Gisoux.

So Aymeric did.

  
* * * * *

  
In an ideal world, growing up is a meandering, unhurried journey undertaken amongst loving family and community, a long process of becoming that blurs into itself as dark does into dawn.

In Ishgard, sometimes a childhood ends violently in red flames and black ash.

And sometimes it ends with a white silk handkerchief wiping fluid off your chin and a fifty-gil piece pressed into your palm.

  
* * * * *

  
By the time Aymeric is done speaking Estinien is shaking all over, his fists clenched so hard against the table that it hurts more to try to uncurl them than it does to keep squeezing, to keep digging his fingernails into his palms, imagining that they instead dig into the bleeding eye sockets of a screaming, repulsive excuse for a priest who begs for mercy and will receive none.

In the silence, Estinien’s breath rasps in his throat as hard as it ever has in the aftermath of battle, heart pounding just as fast, chest heaving as if he has run the entire length of Coerthas, straight from the ruins of Ferndale. The edges of his vision blur and swim and vaguely Estinien thinks that, as much as he had thought he understood rage, he now knows what it is to be blind with it.

Aymeric is staring at the ground, head bowed, face completely obscured by the dark locks of his hair.

“The nuns found him out, eventually,” he says. “I wasn’t the only one.”

A beat, and he goes on.

“I don’t know what happened, but he didn’t come back after that.” He inhales. “My sixteenth summer.”

Estinien closes his eyes, jaw tightening. He remembers his sixteenth summer, spent—as all of them had been, after Alberic had adopted him—learning the art of the lance. Ever training, lightning-focused on the goal of admittance into the Temple Knights, and the Knights Dragoon, and ultimately, of becoming Azure Dragoon.

He forces himself to open his eyes and look at Aymeric, who still isn’t looking back. “And… after?” he asks.

A minute shrug in response. “They apprenticed me to a baker. I worked in the orphanage kitchens, see. But the baker kept docking me pay, saying he didn’t like how I looked at his wife.” Aymeric snorts suddenly, derisively. “As if I’d any interest in a woman three times me own age. ‘Twas _her_ eyes that wandered.”

At last he lifts his head, and as he again regards that striking, stricken face, Estinien is forced to consider, finally, the true price of his urchin’s sublime beauty.

“’Twasn’t hers alone, either,” Aymeric adds. “One evening, after the dinner bake, he pushed me up against the wall and said he’d always wished for a daughter half so pretty.”

Estinien has to consciously slow his breath, parting his lips and drawing the air in solely through his mouth, a trick every knight learns to keep from retching when faced with the sight and smell of gore and entrails strewn across a battlefield. 

“I didn’t go back after that. To the bakery or the orphanage.”

Aymeric looks to the ceiling, and for the first time in all this horrible recounting, Estinien sees a tremor in his lip, hears the sharp, distinct gasp meant to still a wellspring of emotion poised to flood.

“Thing is, Estinien…” His voice pitches suddenly high, nearly cracking like a boy’s. “When you have something they want they take it. Doesn’t matter if you say _no_. But if you say _yes_ and name them a _price_ … they’ll still take what they want but they’ll pay you for the privilege.”

And Estinien can no longer sit there doing _nothing_ , saying _nothing_ , and it’s instinct, it’s all instinct, his body moving well ahead of his mouth or his mind as he pitches forward and grabs Aymeric around the shoulders, hauling him off his chair and practically into his lap, crushing him to his chest, all the ache and soreness in his arms forgotten, inconsequential.

“Y-you…” he says, his voice an anguished snarl, “you deserve _so much better…_ ”

Aymeric makes some indecipherable sound from where his face is buried in Estinien’s shoulder, and the dragoon’s meager words fail him, wondering if he has gravely misspoken and simply made everything worse. But Aymeric makes no move to pull away, and after a moment he feels the slight shift of his posture, and Aymeric’s arms are snaking around Estinien’s waist, clutching back, returning the embrace with a force belied by his slender frame.

Like that they stay for what seems like bells, until Estinien’s arms are numb and stiff as boards, until a Knight Hospitalier is hammering on the door, calling out the sharp reprimand of _Visiting hours are over._ Reluctantly, then, Aymeric straightens and draws away, scrubbing one hand across his face. He looks haunted and hunted, hollow and brittle, every edge sharp and shining as cut crystal in a chapel’s stained window panes.

Estinien stands to see him off. Helps him into his ragged coat, hands him his threadbare scarf to drape around his neck. And when the door shuts behind him, Estinien begins to count his breaths: _one… two… three…_

He makes it to six before he fails, lunging for the wastebin, falling to his knees on the floor, where he vomits, over and over, until the bile drips from his mouth like semen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know it's been a very long time since this updated, and the content of this chapter is the major reason why. It was very emotional and hard to write, as I imagine it may very well also be to read, so if you've stuck with it thus far, thank you very much. I promise this is the worst that it gets.


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